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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2010 witii funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/ournextdoorneigli01liave 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR: 



A WINTER IN MEXICO. 



BY 



GILBERT HAVEN, 

AUTHOR OF "pilgrim's WALLET," " NATIONAL .SERMONS," " THE SAILOR PREACHER," ETC. 



" Thou Italy of the Occident, 
Glorious, gory Mexico." 

Joachim Miller. 



"The Silver is mine and the Gold is mine, 
Saith the Lord of Hosts." 

Haggal 




.^r Cn> 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
1875. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, ^V 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




TO 



MY MOTHER, 



BY THE ELDEST, AND NOW, ALAS, FOR EARTH AND TIME, THE 

YOUNGEST, ALSO, OF HER BOYS, 

ON HER EIGHTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY, FEBRUARY 28th, 1875, 

THIS BOOK 

IS FONDLY INSCRIBED. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. — TO THE CAPITAL. 
I. 

BEFORE THE BEGINNING. 
The Threshold. — From Snow to Flowers. — A Character, and what made him. — 
Our South and its Ethiop. — The Bay and Blaze of Havana. — Off. . . .Page 17 

II. 

A DAY IN YUCATAN. 

The First-born. — An Opportunity accepted. — An Index Point. — Cocoa-nut 
Milk. — The Market-place. — Euchre as a Food. — A Grave Joke. — The Drink 
of the Country. — The Cocoa Palm. — The Native Dress. — A Hacienda. — A 
Pre-adamite Haciendado. — Jenequen. — Prospecting. — Almost a Panic. — Done 
into Rhyme 25 

III. 

THE SEA-PORT. 

Under the Cocoa-nut Palm. — The Plaza. — The Cathedral. — No Distinction on 
account of Color either in Worshiper or Worshiped. — The Watering-place 
of Cortez. — How the Palm looks and grows. — Other Trees of the Tropics. — 
Home Flowers. — July Breakfast in January. — Per Contra, a Norther. — Its 
Utility. — Harbor and Fort. — Size and Shape of the City. — Its Scavenger. — 
Its Houses. — Street Life. — The Lord's Day. — First Protestant Service. — The 
Railroad Inauguration 36 

IV. 

THE HOT LANDS. 

From Idleness to Peril. — Solitud. — Chiquihuiti. — Tropical Forests. — The Falls 
of Atoyac. — Wild Beasts non sunt. — Cordova and its Oranges. — Mount Ori- 
zaba. — Fortin 55 

V. 

ON THE STAGE. 

Our Companions. — Vain Fear. — The Plunge. — Coffee Haciendas. — Peon Life. 
— Orizaba City. — The Mountain -lined Passway. — The Cumbres. — The Last 



CONTENTS. 

Smile of Day and the Hot Lands. — Night and Useless Terror. — " Two-o'clock- 
in-the-morning Courage." — Organ Cactus. — Sunrise. — The Volcano. — Into 
Puebla and the Cars.— The three Snow-peaks together. — Epizaco. — Pulqui. — 
" There is Mexico !" Page 65 



BOOK II.—IN AND AROUND THE CAPITAL. 

I. 

FIRST WEEK IN THE CAPITAL. 

Hotel Gillow. — Cost of Living. — The Climate. — Lottery-ticket Venders. — First 
Sabbath. — First Protestant Church. — A Praise Meeting. — State of the Work. 
—The Week of Prayer 89 

IL 

FROM THE CHURCH TOP. 

First Attempt and Failure. — At it again. — The Southern Outlook. — Popocate- 
petl and Iztaccihuatl. — Cherubusco. — Chapultepec. — Guadalupe. — The patron 
Saint of the Country. — Round the Circle 98 

in. 

FROM THE SIDEWALK. 

Views from Street Corners. — Chief Street. — Shops, Plaza, Cathedral. — High 
and Low Religion. — Aztec Calendar Stone. — The Sacrificial Stone. — The 
President's private House. — Hotel Iturbide. — Private Residences. — Ala- 
meda 1 10 

IV. 

A NEW EVENT IN MEXICO. 

Palace of the President. — The President. — How he looks. — What he pledges. — 
Former Property of the Church. — Its Consequences. — Corruption. — Pospects 
and Perils 126 

V. 

OLD AND NEW AMONG THE SILVER MINES. 

A Mediaeval Castle. — First Icicle. — Omatuska. — More about Pulqui. — A big 
Scare. — A Paradise. — Casa Grande. — A Sabbath in Pachuca. — A native Con- 
vert. — Mediaeval Cavalcade. — The Visitors. — Mounting Real Del Monte. — 
The Castle of Real. — Gentlemanly Assassin. — Silver Factories. — Velasco. — 
A Reduction. — Haciendado Riley. — Mexican Giant's Causeway. — More Sil- 
ver Reduction. — Horsemanship under Difficulties. — Contraries balancing Con- 
traries. — La Barranca Grande. — A bigger Scare. — A Wedding. — Miner and 
Mining. — The Gautemozin. — The better Investment • • "131 



CONTENTS. 9 

VI. 

ACROSS LOTS. 

A drowsy Beginning. — Paradise somewhat Lost. — Trees of Paradise. — A lingual 
Guess at the Aztec Origin. — Tizayuca. — Zumpango. — The Lake System. — 
Guatitlan. — Hotel San Pedro. — Into Town. — Tree of Noche Triste. — Tacuba. 
— Aqueduct of San Cosme. — Tivoli Page i66 

VIL 

THE TOWN OF THE ANGELS. 
Warnings unheeded. — Slow Progress. — Christ in the Inn. — Why Angelic. — Bad 
Faith and worse Works. — First English Service. — Outlook from the Cathe- 
dral. — Tlascala. — The Volcano. — Inside View of the Belfry. — Inside the Ca- 
thedral. — Triple Gilt. — Cathedral Service. — La Destruccion de los Protes- 
tantes 175 

VIIL 

THE MOST ANCIENT AMERICAN MECCA. 

On Horse. — Irrigation. — Entrance to Cholula. — Deserted Churches. — Plaza 
Grande, and its Cortez Horror. — A wide-awake Priest. — A wide View from 
the Summit. — A costly Trifle. — The Ride back 191 

IX. 

A DAY AND NIGHT AT EL DESIERTO. 

A Point of View. — The Woods : their Peril and Preservation. — How we got 
here. — Chapultepec. — Tacubaya. — Santa Fe.-^— Contadera. — Guajimalpa. — The 
Forest. — The Shot. — Solitude. — The Ruin. — Its Inquisition. — A Bowl of 
Song. — Moonlight Pleasure and all-night Horror. — Morning Glories. — Its 
History. — A more excellent Way. — Home again 204 

X. 

A RIDE ABOUT TOWN. 

The Horse and its Rider. — Paseos. — Empress's Drive. — A Relic of Waterloo. 
— The Tree of Montezuma. — The Woods. — View of Chapultepec. — Baths of 
Montezuma. — Tacubaya Gardens. — The Penyan. — Canal. — Floating Gardens. 
— Gautemozin. — The Cafe 219 

XL 

A GARDEN IN EDEN. 

A Temptation. — Up the Mountains. — The Cross of Cortez. — Sight of the Town 
and Valley. — The downward Plunge. — A Lounge. — Church of Cortez. — The 
Enchanted Garden. — Idolatry. — The Market-place. — The Almanac against 
Protestantism. — Palace of Cortez. — The Indian Garden of Maximilian. — A 
Sugar Hacienda. — The latter End. — All Zones 231 



lo CONTENTS. 

XII. 

A WALK IN MEXICO. 

The Market-place. — The Murder-place. — Mexic Art and Music. — Aquarius. — 
Ruins, and how they were made. — A Funeral. — San Fernando Cemetery. — 
The English and American also. — Vaminos Page 248 



BOOK III.— FROM MEXICO TO MATAMORAS. 



TO QUERETARO. 

The Start. — First and last Church in the City. — The Game-cocks. — First Scare. 
— Guatitlan again. — Barrenness. — Gambling and Tortilla-making. — Descent 
to Tula. — A Bit of English Landscape. — Tula. — Hunt for a Statue. — A sil- 
ver Heavens and Earth. — Juelites. — Mountains and a mounting Sun. — Vista 
Hermosa. — Napola. — A stone Town. — An Interior. — The Stables. — Sombrero 
Walls. — Eagle Tavern. — Playing with the Children. — Gamboling versus 
Gambling. — Cazadero, the Bull Prairie. — Hacienda of Palmillas. — Blacksmith 
Idolatry. — Misterio de la Santissima Trinidad. — 'Tother Side up. — Descent 
into the Valley of San Juan. — Lone yellow Cone. — Longfellow and Homer. 
— Elysium after much Turmoil. — A Dissertation on Beggars. — A Market Um- 
brella. — In Perils among Robbers. — The beautiful Valley of San Juan. — 
Colorado. — A Turner Sunset. — Sight of Queretaro. — The Aqueduct. — The 
Bed 267 

IL 

QUERETARO. 

Into the Town. — Maximilian's Retreat. — Capture and Execution. — Hill of Bells. 
— Factories and Gardens. — Hot-weather Bath. — A Home. — Alameda. — Sun- 
day, sacred and secular. — A very Christian Name. — Crowded Market, and 
empty Churches. — Chatting in Church. — Priestly Procession. — Among the 
Churches. — Hideous Images. — Handsome Gardens 285 

IIL 

TO GUANAJUATO. 

A bad Beginning. — A level Sea. — Celaya. — A Cactus Tent. — Salamanca. — 
Irapuato. — Entrance to Guanajuato. — Gleaning Silver. — The Hide-and-go- 
seek City. — A Revelation 300 

IV. 

A SILVER, AND A SACRED TOWN. 

Native Costume. — Reboza and Zarepe. — The Sombrero. — A Reduction Haci- 
enda. — The Church in Guanajuato. — Its Antipodes. — A clerical Acquaint- 



CONTENTS. • II 

ance. — A mulish Mule. — " No quiere." — The Landscape. — Lettuce. — Calza- 
da. — The Town and Country. — Fish of the Fence. — The Cactus and the Ass. 
— Compensation. — One-story City. — High Mass and higher Idolatry. — The 
God Mary Page 307 

V. 

A HORSEBACK RIDE OVER THE SILVER MOUNTAINS. 

Indian Dancing and Gambling. — A sleeping City. — Wood and Coal Carriers. 
— Mineral de la Luz. — A Mountain Nest. — Sometimes up, sometimes down. 
— Berrying and Burying. — The Apple-tree among the Trees of the Wood. — 
Off the Track. — A funereal Tread. — Lunch in the Air. — The Plunge. — A 
Napola Orchard. — Out on the Plains. — Valley of the Sancho 321 

VL 

TO AND IN SAN LUIS POTOSI. 

Aztec Music. — Low-hung but high-hung Clouds. — Troops and Travelers. — A 
big, small Wagon. — Zeal of San Felipe. — Lutero below Voltaire. — Rough 
Places not smooth. — Mesquite Woods. — Silver Hills. — Two Haciendas. — 
How they Irrigate. — Lassoing. — The Frescoes of Frisco. — Cleft Cliffs. — The 
Valley of San Luis Potosi. — Greetings and Letters. — The Church of Mary. — 
The coming Faith. — A costly and Christly Flag. — Joseph and Mary wor- 
shiped in vain for Rain 334 

vn. 

OUT AT SEA. 

Leaving Shore. — A hot Companion. — Parallel Mountains. — Parks and Divides. 
— Hacienda of Bocas. — Gingerbread Pigs. — A ragged Boy Apollo. — Marriage- 
less Motherhood. — The Widow's Reply. — Sierra Prieto. — Mortevillos.— Rev- 
eling in the Halls of Montezuma. — Strife of Beggars. — Dusty Reflections. — 
Venada. — Chalcos. — The Worship of the dying Wafer 351 

VIII. 

MID-OCEAN. 

The "Rolling Forties." — Ceral Hard-tack. — Not so Hard. — Mexican Birds. 
— Smoking-girls. — Laguna Seca. — La Punta. — First Breakfast in an Adobe. 
— Hacienda of Precita. — The Spanish Bayonet. — Mattejuala. — Birnam Wood 
marching on Dunsinane. — The first and last Mosquito of Mexico. — Yankee 
Singing. — Worse threatened ; 359 

IX. 

NEARING SHORE. 

Preparations against a Rancho. — A golden Set. — Bonaventura. — A Rancho : 
what is it? — Companions. — Aztec or Chinese? — Desolation. — Tropic Thorns 
and Flowers. — An Oasis. — Hacienda of Solado, and its unexpected Hospital- 



12 CONTENTS. 

ities. — Freaks of the Spanish Bayonet. — Green velvet Mountains.— The true 
Protector Page 366 

X. 

INTO PORT. 

Sunrise. — Villa de Gomez Firias. — A lost American foimd. — Flowering Palms. 
— An unpleasant Reminder. — A charming Park. — Agua Nueva. — La Encan- 
tada. — La Angostura. — Battlemented Mountains. — Buena Vista. — The Battle- 
field. — The Result. — Why. — Saltillo. — Alameda. — Friends 375 

XL 

MONTEREY. 

Songs in the Night. — Open Fields near Saltillo. — Eifect of Irrigation. — 
"The Rosy-fingered Dawn." — Gathering together of the Mountains. — San 
Gregario. — A Thousand-feet Fall. — Rinconada. — Wonders of Flowers. — A 
Hole through a Mountain. — The Saddle Mountain. — The Mitre. — Santa 
Caterina. — A Tin God. — A familiar Color. — St. Peter. — No Bathing after 
Midday. — The Smallness of Mexican Heads. — Miss Rankin's Work. — Strife 
between Brethren. — Its Benefits. — The two Dogs. — The Eye of the Town. — 
Revolutions 387 

XIL 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

Rancho de Villa de General Trevina. — A Sign of Home. — A misty Escort. — 
Blistering Morin. — Chaparral. — The changed Face of Nature. — The Yankee 
Hat and Hut. — Mesas, or Table-lands. — The bottom Rancho: Garcia. — 
Mier. — Comargo. — The Grand River unseen, yet ever near. — Last Night in a 
Rancho. — La Antigua Renosa 398 

XIIL 

JOLTINGS AND JOTTINGS. 
A Creator and an Imitator. — Church-making and Carriage-writing. — The old- 
est Church and the youngest. — Compagnons du Voyage. — A Brandy-sucker. 
— Prohibition for Mexico. — Talks with the Coachman and Mozo. — Hides and 
Shoes. — San Antonio. — Its Casa and Inmates. — Rancho Beauties. — Women's 
Rights in Mexico. — Sermonizing in the Wilderness. — A Night on Stage-top. 
— Fantastic Forms. — Spiritual Phantasms. — Light in a dark Place. — Mata- 
moras and Brownsville 403 

XIV. 

THE FINISH. 

Coach, not Couch. — A new Tread-mill. — Rascality of a ■ Sub-treasurer. — The 
same Country, but another Driver. — Live-oak versus Mesquite. — A sandy 
Desert as large as Massachusetts. — Not a complete Desert. — A dirty, but hos- 



CONTENTS. 



13 



pitable Rancho. — Thousands of Cattle on no Hill. — A forty-mile Fence. — 
A Patch of four hundred square Miles. — Mr. King's Rancho and Pluck. 
— Perils. — Mr. Murdock's Murder. — Corpus Christi. — Indianola. — Good- 
bye Page 418 

XV. 

CHRISTIAN WORK IN MEXICO. 
Not yet. — The First Last. — A Telegram and its Meaning. — Perils and Perplexi- 
ties of Church purchasing. — Temptation resisted. — Success and Dedication. 
— Cure Hidalgo and his Revolution. — Iturbide and Intolerance. — Beginning 
of the End. — The Mexican War, and its Religious Effects. — The Bible and the 
Preacher. — The first Revolt from Romanism. — Abolition of Property and of 
Institutions. — Invasion of the Papacy through France and Maximilian. — Ex- 
pulsion thereof through America and Juarez. — The Constitutionalists the 
first Preachers. — The first Martyr: "Viva Jesus ! Viva Mexico !" — Francisco 
Aguilar and the first Church.— The Bible and his Death. — First Appeal 
abroad. — Response. — Rev. Dr. Riley and his Work. — Excitement, Peril, Prog- 
ress. — President Juarez, the first Protestant President. — The chief native 
Apostle, Manual Aguas. — His Excommunication by and of the Archbishop. — 
A powerful Attack on the Church. — His Death. — The Entrance of the Amer- 
ican Churches in their own Form. — Their present Status. — The first Ameri- 
can Martyr, Stephens ; and how he was butchered. — San Andres. — Govern- 
mental Progress. — The Outlook. — Postfatory 424 



Appendix A 455 

Appendix B 456 

Appendix C •. 461 

Appendix D 466 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 

Cathedral and Plaza by Moonlight Frontispiece 

The Bay of Havana 23 

Governor's Palace at Vera Cruz 37 

Vera Cruz 45 

Fountain at Vera Cruz 50 

Old Bridge of Atoyac 59 

Orange Grove, Cordova 61 

A Peon's House ■ 66 

Great Bridge of Mathata 67 

View of Orizaba 69 

River at Orizaba 71 

The Organ Cactus 77 

Maguey Plant 82 

The Valley of Mexico, from the American ofificial Map faces 89 

Mexican Flower-girl 91 

First Protestant Church 94 

Chapultepec loi 

Church of Guadalupe faces 102 

The Lottery-ticket 104 

Iztaccihuatl 106 

The Dome 108 

The Market-place, City of Mexico 112 

San Cosme Aqueduct, City of Mexico 117 

The Palace of Mexico 119 

The Aztec Calendar Stone 122 

The Sacrificial Stone faces 123 

Interior of a modern Mexican House 124 

The Palisades of Regla 153 

A Mexican General 158 

Tree of Triste Noche 171 

Garden of the Tivolis, San Cosme 173 

Street View in Puebla 177 



1 6 ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Page 

Ruins of the covered Way to the Inquisition 179 

The Cathedral of Puebla 182 

Convent of San Domingo, City of Mexico 186 

Prisoners of the Inquisition 188 

Church built by Cortez 195 

Pyramid of Cholula. 198 

View from the Pyramid of Cholula 200 

The Tree of Montezuma 222 

The Baths of Montezuma 225 

The Canal _ 227 

Floating Gardens 229 

Saw-mill 245 

Planting Corn 247 

Scene in Market 249 

A Water-carrier 255 

Soldiers' Monument in the American Cemetery 261 

Cactus, and Woman kneading Tortillas , 270 

Mexican Beggar 280 

Aqueduct of Queretaro 284 

Queretaro 288 

A Cotton Factory, Queretaro 291 

Church .of San Diego, Guanajuato 305 

Mexican Wash-house faces 317 

Funeral of Governor Manuel Doblado 317 

Mexican Muleteer 336 

The Virgin 348 

Joseph 349 

Buena Vista 381 

Saddle Mountain 391 

Bishop's Residence, Monterey 393 

Alameda, Monterey 397 

The Itinerary — from Vera Cruz to Matamoras 415 

Church of San Francisco, City of Mexico 425 

First Methodist Episcopal Church, City of Mexico 430 

A distant View of the Church of the Ex-convent of San Francisco, City of 

Mexico , 437 

Church of San Jose de Gracia 442 

Manuel Aguas 444 

John L. Stephens 448 

Tower and Castle of Acapulco, Mexico — Scene of the recent Massacre. ... 451 



BOOK I. 

TO THE CAPITAL. 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



I. 

BEFORE THE BEGINNING. 

The Threshold. — From Snow to Flowers. — A Character, and what made him. 
— Our South and its Ethiop. — The Bay and Blaze of Havana. — Off. 

There is properly a path to the front door of a house, or at 
least a few steps ere its entrance is reached. So every voyage has 
a preliminary, a before -the -door -step experience. This is some- 
times excluded entirely from the journal of the journey, sometimes 
inserted in the preface — a proper place for the preliminaries (a 
fore -talk best occurring at the fore -threshold), sometimes made 
into Chapter First. The latter course is here adopted, though 
every reader is at liberty to skip the chapter, leap over the thresh- 
old, and press instantly into the centre of the house, that is, the 
volume. 

The nearest things are often the farthest off, the farthest off the 
nearest. This is true of places as well as of peoples. We know 
more of Bismarck than of our next-block neighbor, of Paris than 
of many an American town. This law is verified in our knowl- 
edge, or ignorance rather, of our nearest national neighbor, Mexico. 
Few books are written, less are read, upon the most novel land on 
our continent, and one of the most attractive on any continent. 
Prescott's "Conquest" is esteemed a sort of historical romance, 
the very charm of his style adding to the unreality of his theme. 
And if it be reckoned strict history, it is still history; not a living, 
breathing power, as is England or Italy, Germany or Russia, but 



1-8 • OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

a vivid fact of three centuries and over ago, a mediaeval story of 
marvel and mystery. In fact, Prescott's "Conquest" has made 
that of its subject, Cortez, to fade. And one is half tempted to be- 
lieve that the real conquistador was not the strong-brained, strong- 
limbed, strong-souled Spaniard, but the half-blind and wholly med- 
itative Bostonian. The Achilles and his Homer are worthy of 
their several fame. Yet the land on which, or out of which, each 
won his chief glory is still superior to them both. A run along 
some of its chief paths of interest may make this fact patent to 
other eyes. 

Just as our North was putting on its winter night-robes, which 
it did not take off for four long months, I packed my valise, three 
of them, as became a " carpet-bagger," and moved southward. 

Snow chased me as far as Richmond ; moist, mild June met 
me at Montgomery; oranges, in clusters, plucked fresh from the 
boughs, were passed through the cars near Mobile ; and New Or- 
leans welcomed me to summer skies, and showers, and flowers. A 
Northern touch of sharp and almost icy weather made the steamer 
for Havana less unwelcome. So a glimpse at good friends, and' 
a coming and going grasp of hands, including a coming but not 
going grasp of hearts, and the steamer and I are off. 

A character that I met on the steamer, by its strangeness re- 
lieved the sea -qualms, and, if for no other reason, deserves a 
sketch. He was a type of a vanishing class — few, I hope, at any 
time, but not without existence. He was a Havana planter, who 
had come to New Orleans to sell his crop, and was returning brim- 
ful of cash and whisky ; nay, not brimful of the latter, or, if so, with 
great capacity of enlargement — worse than some prolix preachers 
possess over their text. When the captain entered the cabin, he 
greeted him with a shower of oaths — not in rage, but in good hu- 
mor — that being almost his only vocabulary. He called constantly 
for every sort of liquor — beer, gin, wine, whisky. He drank all 
the three days and nights like a fish, if a fish ever drinks. It never 
drinks such stuff as he constantly poured down his inflamed throat. 
The stuff that went in and that came out were alike horrible. 



A FREE RELIGIONIST. 19 

A clever colored lad from Philadelphia was the special object 
of his contemptuous detestation. He ordered him to get the 
liquors and hot water every few minutes until near midnight. 
When the fires were out, and hot water was not to be had, and the 
bar shut, and the liquors also absent, then he raved at the lad for 
not waking up steward and purser, and securing the delectable 
elements. If the boy went slowly to his impossible task, how he 
cursed him ! how he blasphemed his people ! how he cursed the 
Abolitionists for setting them free ! declaimed against Massachu- 
setts in particular for her share in this matter, and declared their 
incapacity for liberty, though the boy was tenfold more capable 
of freedom than himself. Yet he was as shrewd as any other 
Yankee, and said that slavery was as good as dead in Cuba, and 
he had persuaded his wife, and sold off all his " niggers " when he 
could get something for them. I am sure they were glad to get 
away from the lash of his tongue and arm, and I pitied the hired 
hands on whom he voided the rheum of an arrogant disposition, a ' 
trained contempt and hatred, a false theory, and a fearful appetite. 
Nay, his wife must suffer often from that scourge. 

He was a good Romanist withal, though without any of the 
orthodoxy of his Church. He said that he prayed nightly to the 
Virgin, but he did not believe in her, or Christ, or the Bible, or 
any thing but God. I said, " If you believe in God, you believe 
in Christ, for Jesus Christ is God." " Jesus Christ !" he broke 

forth; " Jesus Christ!" It was the worst oath I had ever 

heard. I called him quick to his senses, and he halted a moment 
in his mad and profane career. He was a Free Religionist, like 
three others whom I have met on this trip, two of whom were also 
European Roman Catholics, one a Bostonian, showing that there 
is no distinction of clime or race in this anti- faith. Like the 
others, he showed his free religion and modern theology by most 
outrageous swearing. It is the true creed of that churchless 
church, and shows that men who profess to deny damnation, hell, 
Christ, and even God himself, are most profuse in using terms which 
show that these are the profoundest beliefs of their real nature. 



20 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

I pitied the poor rich man, and the system of reh'gion and so- 
ciety that had turned such a creature of holy possibiHties into a 
demon ; and I prayed all the more earnestly for the abolition of 
the devil of drink, and that it might speedily follow to eternal de- 
struction its kindred demon already slain. 

What wonderful blessings has Abolition brought to all those who 
were held, like this rich victim, fast in more slavish chains ! Our 
white brethren will rejoice as much over the liberty it has given 
them and their sons as in that which it has given their darker 
brothers. It has made such characters as this impossible. Men 
may drink yet, and curse Christ and his Church, but they can not 
be developed into such frightful specimens of diseased humanity. 

He made me think of a like character I met on the road from 
Suez to Cairo. He was a genteel, well-dressed Turkish merchant, 
with his nice silk jacket " all buttoned down before " and behind, 
and tasteful silk breeches. He was bringing some Nubian boys to 
the Cairene market. He kept tormenting the poor lads by touch- 
ing their arms, cheeks, and legs, anywhere, with the burning end 
of his cigar. He laughed at their silent cringes, and looked at us 
as if expecting reciprocal smiles. Had we known his language, 
we would have cursed him to his face. If such were his jokes, 
what must have been his treatment of them when roused to mad- 
ness, as he undoubtedly often was ! He was very devout withal, 
and at the sunset station was first from the cars, and on the wilder- 
ness gravel, in sight of all, was making his prostrations and mut- 
tering his prayers. 

It is this frightful exception that proves the rule, an exception 
not so infrequent as it ought to have been, as the Rev. Mr. Bleby 
shows in his late most interesting book, entitled "Romance without 
Fiction ; or, Sketches from the Port-folio of an Old Missionary," 
in which he gives thrilling illustrations of hardnesses of heart and 
cruelties of conduct in the English West Indies, and by English 
gentlemen, and clergymen even, that are harrowing after almost a 
century has passed since their enactment. All our Sunday-schools, 
North and South, should read this vivid record of modern martyr- 



FINDING THE ETHIOP. 21 

dom, not less horrible and holy than that given by Fox, and exe- 
cuted by false Christians upon the true in the Middle and the 
later ages. The evil that wrought it has ceased — thanks be to 
God ! — in most lands, and will soon cease in all. 

All this conduct was simply because this comely lad was color- 
ed. I thought I had escaped from caste and all its effects. When 
I mounted the Yazoo I did not expect to see colorphobia in any 
shape until I had gotten back to our beloved country, when I again 
expected to see it everywhere, in every shape. But the presence 
was not to be put by. It seemed even providential ; for the first 
Sunday that I spent in the South, only the week previous, I opened 
my Testament and lighted upon the passage, " The angel of the 
Lord spake unto Philip, saying, 'Arise and go into the south coun- 
try.' " The next verse says, " He arose and went, and lo ! a man, 
an Ethiop." It was, seemingly, a surprise to him that he was sent 
to this black Gentile. But he was without prejudice of color, 
though tempted, as a Jew, by that of blood and faith. For these lat- 
ter reasons he may have hesitated a little, for the Holy Spirit has 
to enforce the order of the angel, and he says to Philip, "Go 
and glue thyself to this chariot." As the Testament was being 
read in course, I can hardly say the passage was selected by lot or 
of the Lord ; yet it struck me very forcibly, and I fancied (was it 
fancy?) that the ordering in this case was providential. I had 
arisen and gone into the South country, and had found there the 
Ethiop, and now heard the Spirit say, "Glue thyself" — this the 
original means — "to him." I saw in his conversion the regenera- 
tion of all our South land and North land, too ; for the Lord will 
uplift the whole nation only as we uplift our long down-trodden 
brethren into Christian oneness with ourselves. The Ethiop is 
riding already in his chariot, and as Lowell wittily somewhere, for 
substance, says, "The white man will be willing enough to run 
along by his side, and accept a seat with him, when the black man 
rides in his own chariot." 

But our South country was not sufficiently South. So I am sent 
yet farther into the South country — the " mid country," as the orig- 



22 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

inal hath it — till I find myself where our "Sunny South" is far 
away to the north, and where even our country is printed on the 
map "the United States of the North." Much as some of our 
good neighbors may dislike to be called Northern people, they are 
compelled to endure that affliction from Mexican lips. This proud 
\ and sensitive nation calls itself" the United States of Mexico," and 
it will not allow another body of commonwealths on the continent 
to call itself "the United States of America." 

If our brethren had achieved their independence they might 
have been compelled to conform to this nomenclature, and called 
their country the Central United States. Fortunately, they can 
and will yet rejoice in the continental title which includes centre 
and circumference in its all-embracing area. 

This experience on the steamer has led to all these musings. 
Better these than that dreary heaving of the stomach and the sea. 
How the outside and the inside miserably harmonize ! The gray 
I get glimpses of through that bit of a hole in the side of the ship, 
as the berth tips over, lets me sickly see a like sick sea. The 
waves toss wearily on their bed, and I am glad, in a miserable way, 
that I have even this sort of communion with nature. 

The Yazoo carries us to Havana and to midsummer in sixty 
hours. The hot bay seems hotter than New York's hottest. Its 
round rim is ablaze with direct and reflected burnings. The gold- 
en sand-hills shoot back the golden rays in increased fervor and 
brilliance. The palm gives a shadeless shade, as would an um- 
brella stuck on the top of a twenty-foot pole. The catcus, least 
lovely and not least useful of tropical plants, thick sets its quoit- 
like leaves with thorns. Deep sheds cover the quays, protecting 
from the fiery blaze both man and beast : which is which, is yet un- 
decided, since both are beasts here, the mule often less so than the 
man. Under their broad roofs goes ceaselessly on the busy load- 
ing of sugar and oranges and'bananas, the busy unloading of bales 
and barrels of Northern fields and mills. 

The slave is still here. He is a vanished institution northward 
across that blue gulf, and already in his last stages of serfhood 



PROSPECTIVE LIBERTY AND POSSIBLE CULTURE. 



23 



here. He exhibits, in this decay of brutehood and beginning of 
manhood, some traces of both natures. Here is a big, oily fellow, 
lifting freight out of the New York steamer. He is as lithe as a 
Greek wrestler, and, like him, anointed with fresh oil, his own oil, 
extracted by the Adamic curse, not from his brow alone, but from 
his back and breast and legs and arms, even the whole body. 
Like the- precious oil on Aaron's head, it flows down to the bot- 
tom of his garments, or would if he had any on, a convert alone 
composing his wardrobe. 










THE BAY OF HAVANA. 

He will make a good Touissant, give him education, or a bad 
one if he has not soon given him liberty. This he is soon to 
have ; and some future visitor may see him clothed and in his right 
mind, well-cultured, sitting in the council chamber or standing in 
the pulpit, serving in high places as he now serves in low. 

This glimpse from the bay is all I can enjoy ; for the steamer 
O'iy of Merida is in, and will leave before night for Vera Cruz. 
The vessel must be off before sundown, or it can not leave for two 



24 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

days ; for this is the night before Christmas, and the Church au- 
thorities forbid all leaving of ships or doing of any other work on 
this holiday, except on payment into their palms, professedly into 
her treasury, of double fees of doubloons ; so, to escape commit- 
ting the sin or paying the price of bribery, the captain is deter- 
mined to get outside the Castle before sunset vespers ring. 

The hot streets are touched ; the collector and commandant are 
paid their demanded and needless fee ; the filth and fever of the 
narrow streets about the wharf are duly interviewed ; a coachman 
lashes his sick horses from officer to officer ; a cup of coffee is drank 
at those best saloons of Spanish-speaking countries ; and some ten 
dollars are spent for the privilege of entering the port and exchan- 
ging steamers. Then the black sides of the goodly steamer are 
scaled, and Havana is left almost or ere it is reached. 

" Out to sea the streamers fly." 

We leave the port left three centuries and a half ago by a dar- 
ing soldier- farmer, with his small accompaniment of ships and 
soldiers, for the land, whisperings of whose wonders 'had allured 
the commandant of Cuba to embark his treasures in its dis- 
covery and subjugation; and who also, less wisely for himself, 
but not for the world, had been induced to give command of the 
fleet to a reconciled foeman, who had made peace with his adver- 
sary, that he might thus gain over him the greater victory. 

Velasquez, however, began to fear him before he sailed, and had 
•revoked his commission. But Cortez, before he had received of- 
ficial knowledge of the revocation, hoisted anchor and sail, and 
fled in the night. We follow after at not far from the same hour. 
The city lights glimmer along the shore ere we lose sight of it and 
them, and we skim all night along the way that adventurer sailed. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 



25 



n. 

A DAY IN YUCATAN. 

The First-born. — An Opportunity accepted. — An Index Point. — Cocoa-nut 
Milk. — The Market-place. — Euchre as a Food. — A Grave Joke. — The Drink 
of the Country. — The Cocoa Palm. — The Native Dress. — A Hacienda. — A 
Pre-adamite Haciendado. — Jenequen. — Prospecting. — Almost a Panic. — Done 
into Rhyme. 

Every ttiing is affected by first impressions. Sometimes tliey 
can never be overcome. That like or dislike often abides incura- 
ble. The first sight of a foreign shore is a love or a hate forever. 
How perfect Ireland is in my memory, because it looked so beauti- 
ful, rising, a green wave of stillness and strength, out of that sick 
and quaking sea, over which I had been rolling so long ! Egypt 
is not a river of verdure so much as a strip of blazing sand, for 
Alexandria, and not Cairo, is its first-born in my experience. 

Mexico has its first picture in my gallery. Whatever grandeurs 
of mountain or glories of forest it may unfold, its first impression 
will always be that first day in Yucatan. I never dreamed a month 
before of seeing Yucatan. Even if Mexico itself had crossed the 
mind as a possibility of experience, Yucatan had never been in- 
cluded in that concept. That prettily sounding name was as far 
off as Cathay or Bokhara. 

Yucatan was, to me, Central America ; a museum of ancient 
monuments ; an out-of the-world corner. In fact, it did not belong 
to Mexico till Maximilian's time. He annexed it, and they hold 
together still. We often strike an unknown rock in our sail through 
life, and Yucatan was the unexpected shoal on which we first 
stranded. It happened in this wise : 

The City of Mei-ida makes a landing as near as possible to the 



26 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

city after which it is named. This city is twenty miles from the 
shore, in the peninsula of Yucatan. It has sixty thousand inhab- 
itants, and is the centre of a vast hemp-producing country. This 
hemp finds a ready market in New York. Hence the pause at 
this spot ; hence the name of our vessel. It is to land stores for 
the big city, and to take hemp for the bigger country. 

The steamer lies four miles from shore. Wearied with its close 
confinement, three passengers, two of whom are General Palmer, 
president of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, who, with 
Generar Rosecrans, is seeking the extension of that system in 
Mexico, and Mr. Parish, their European financial representative, 
propose to spend on shore the day in which we are to remain here. 
We are met with protestations from various quarters. We are told 
that we will be sun-struck ; will get the calentura, or fever ; that 
the fleas will take possession of us ; that a Norther will arise, and 
we can not get back to the steamer; and thus hobgoblins dire 
are piled on our path. The American minister, returning home, 
grand and genial, adds his preventive persuasions. But none of 
these things move us. We go. The captain of the boat which is 
rowing us ashore enlivens our depressed spirits with encouraging 
stories about the abundance of monkeys and parrots, of lions and 
tigers, and deer and wild boars, and every such terror and delight 
— none of which we see. 

We land at a wharf covered with bales of hemp, and brown-skin- 
ned natives in their white suits. On it stands a small, pale-faced 
gentleman, whom we find to be Mr. Tappan, of Boston, the con- 
sular agent, and grandson of the minister who wrote the plaintive 
and pretty verses beginning, 

" There is an hour of peaceful rest." 

It is almost always fortunate for an American abroad if the United 
States official be an American. He knows his language, the first 
important consideration, and he knows what the visitor wants to 
know, the second and not less important consideration. Our Bos- 
ton friend is expert in these two excellences. He takes us across 



THE COLLECTOR'S FAMILY. 27 

the blazing sands of this holiday season to the cool arches of the 
collector's house. That gentlemanly official welcomes us to Pro- 
gresso, the name of this new town. This name shows its newness, 
and also, possibly, that a Yankee had something to do with its 
christening ; for the Mexican has hardly yet learned that there be 
such a thing as progress, much less that it can be concentrated into 
a town, though he indulge in titular progress, and put into names 
what his Northern brothers put into fact. 

Our gentlemanly collector leads us through his official rooms 
into the domestic apartments, and introduces us to his family. He 
is a Spaniard, his wife a Cuban, and his three adopted daughters 
are representatives of the three races, so called, that hold harmoni- 
ous possession of this soil. They consist of a white young lady of 
Anglo-Saxon lightness of complexion, seemingly of a Northern Eu- 
ropean origin, her adopted parents being dark to her ; another, 
slightly her junior, whose tint is of that Afric sort that Mrs. Kem- 
ble Butler deemed richer than any European, and whose opinion 
our former aristocracy confirmed by their conduct ; and the third 
was a pure Indian belle, none the less beautiful in contour and 
complexion, a half-way house between these two extremes of human 
colors. We did not see the Pocahontas of the family, but the 
Cleopatra and Boadicea were among our agreeable entertainers. 
They were dressed just alike, in neat, light, brown-checked mus- 
lins, with girlish modesty of array and manner that was cultivated 
and charming. Our ignorance of Spanish put a barrier between 
us, but their bearing was sisterly and filial ; and we accepted this 
index of the New America as a token of the superiority of Yucatan 
over the United States, and a proof of the iitness of the name of 
the town. Had many an American father recognized, not his 
adopted, but his actual family, a like variety would have been visi- 
ble about the paternal board. It will yet be, and without sin or 
shame, as in this cultivated circle. 

The host offered us the milk of the cocoa-nut in large goblets, 
and grapes preserved in their natural shape. One cocoa-nut makes 
a tumbler of limpid water sweet and agreeable. His open apart- 



28 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

ments let the cooling breezes blow through, and we rejoiced an 
hour in the shelter from the July heat of December, and the stim- 
ulus of a Long Branch July breeze. 

Then comes a walk through Progresso. This city, like our new 
Western enterprises, is better laid out than settled. It has its 
straight, broad streets running through chaparral, its grand plaza, 
with scarcely a corner of it yet occupied, its corner-lots at fabulous 
prices. That corner opposite the custom-house they hold at two 
thousand dollars. Others a little outside of the centre you can 
buy as low as fifty dollars. That is better than you can do on the 
North Pacific, where on a boundless prairie they will stake out a 
lot twenty-five feet by a hundred, and charge you hundreds of dol- 
lars for the bit. 

The market-place is a projecting thatched roof over the side of 
a one-story edifice. On mats sit brown old ladies with almost 
equally old-looking vegetables. Here are oranges, bananas, black 
beans, squash seeds boiled in molasses, a sort of candy, and other 
esculents, to me unknown. Among them is one called euchre.^ 
Never having known what that too-familiar word means in the no- 
, menclature of the States, I thought I would find out its meaning 
in Yucatan, so I invested a six-and-a-quarter-cent bit in this game 
of chance. I received a piece of the root — for so I judged it to 
be — looking like a cross between a turnip and a carrot. It was 
white, of various shapes, round, square, long. My piece was about 
as large round as a child's wrist, and as long as its hand. I tasted 
it, and was satisfied with euchre as an article of diet. If others, on 
one taste of their sort, would as quickly discard it, they might safe- 
ly be left to make the experiment. But even my friend, the Rev. 
Mr. Murray, can not effect the prohibition of that appetite in that 
way. It is likely this would grow with tasting, as the other does, 
for it was sweet and not disagreeable, being like the turnip and 
carrot in nature as well as in looks. If it could replace the fatal 
fascination of its synonym, I should be glad to see it introduced 
into our country. 

The houses of Progresso are of one story, of mortar or thatch. 



MONTEZUMA AND CHOCOLATE. 29 

covered with a high roof of thatch. This high roof is open inside, 
and makes them shady and cool. The sides are also often of 
thatch, and they look like a brown dwarf with a huge brown straw 
sombrero pulled over his eyes. Some of those built of mortar have 
ornamental squares in the sides, where shells are carefully set in 
various shapes in the mortar, and which make a pleasing effect, 
the diamonds and other shapes giving the walls a variety that is 
really artistic. Why could it not be imitated in larger buildings 
at home.'' One house had the word " Sepulcro " in large letters 
chalked along its front. " What does that mean ?" asks one of the 
party. The occupant was sick a long time, and the boys thought 
it was about time he had died, so they chalked that word along 
the door to express their conviction of his duty. He ought to be 
dead — dead he shall be called. A grave joke, that. 

Here I first tasted the sort of chocolate of which Montezuma 
was so fond, and which he took so thick as almost to make it an 
edible. A brown, brawny woman made us a cup of the same in 
a bamboo - sided, rush - roofed cafe. It was worthy Montezuma's 
praise : Parisian chocolate takes the second place hereafter, and a 
good way below the first. It is prepared in milk, and is a thick, 
soft liquid that melts on your tongue and "goeth down sweetly, 
causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak." That dame 
would make her fortune by such a cafe in New York. But, then, 
she probably wishes for no fortune, and her secret, the secret of 
all the dames of the country, may never be revealed outside the 
land itself. You must come to Mexico to know how "chocolatte" 
can taste. 

The fields about Progresso have chiefly shrubs of the cactus 
order. Beautiful flowers of purple, yellow, and crimson abound. 
Here grows wild the heliotrope, the fragrant purple flower that is 
scattered so generally at funerals. The sweet-pea and other cul- 
tivated delights of the Northern hot-house and garden are blos- 
soming abundantly. 

The cocoa -palm throws out its long spines, deep green, thrust 
straight out from a gray trunk, that looks as if wrapped in old 



30 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

clothes against the cold. This graj^ bnrk is a striking offset to the 
dark, rich leaves, which are the blanches themselves. Where these 
leaves push forth from the trunk, from ten to fifty feet from the 
ground, a cluster of green balls, of various sizes and ages, are 
hanging. This green rind is an inch thick. Then the black shell 
known to us is reached, and inside of that, not the thick white 
substance we find on opening it, but a thin soft layer, or third 
rind, the most of the hollow being filled with milk. Later in the 
season the milk coagulates to meat, and the cocoa-nut of com- 
merce is completed. It is cultivated extensively here, both for 
home use and the Northern market. 

The people are chiefly Indians, not of the Aztec, but Toltec va- 
riety. This is a nation hundreds of years older than the Aztecs, and 
who are supposed to be the builders of the famous monuments of 
Central America, and to have been driven from Mexico southward 
about a thousand years ago. They are of the usual Indian tint, 
but, unlike our aborigines, live in comfortable houses, are engaged 
in industrious callings, and dress in a comely manner. 

Both sexes wear white, the men and boys having often one leg 
of their trowsers rolled up, for what purpose we could not guess, 
unless it be for the more cleanly fording of the brooklets and mud- 
lets that occur. It was a token of neatness, if that was the reason, 
that was very commendable. 

The women wear a skirt of white, and a loose white waist sepa- 
rate from the skirt, and hanging sometimes near to the bottom of 
the under-garment. This over-skirt, or robe, is ornamented with 
fringe and borders worked in blue. The head-dress is a shawl or 
mantle of light cotton gauze, of blue or purple, thrown gracefully 
over the head and shoulders. One lady, evidently thinking well 
of herself and her apparel, had a ring on every finger of each hand, 
and gold ornaments hanging profusely from her neck. I have seen 
many ladies who, if they distributed the rings singly on each finger, 
would not find both hands sufficient for their display. This light- 
brown laughing madam had her limits seemingly, beyond which 
she would not go — eight rings and no more. 



A COCOA-NUT ORCHARD. 31 

As a proof of the industry and intelligence of these natives, let 
us go to a hacienda, or farm, a mile out of town. Though it is a 
short walk, yet having ordered a fly for a longer ride, we employ it 
on this excursion. We did not take the carriage of the country, 
which is a basket on two wheels, about the size of a cot-bed, which 
cot-bed itself lies on the bottom of the basket, and on which sit the 
passengers. A wicker covering bends over about two -thirds of 
this bed ; the rest is open to sun and rain. Three mules abreast 
make this fly fly. - 

Our three little mules drag a sort of covered coach on high 
springs, narrow and jolty. They run under the whip and scream 
of the muleteer. The gate of the hacienda is soon reached. A 
lazy Indian boy opens it. We rush between a green wall of co- 
coa-trees a score of rods to a thatched - built house, large, well- 
floored, high-roofed, clean. The brown lady of the mansion wel- 
comes us, and I try to buy a hammock. She asks three dollars. 
I have no gold, and she despises greenbacks, whether of Wash- 
ington or Havana. So the bargain fails. The same thing I have 
since seen offered in Boston for less money. It is cheaper some- 
times to buy your foreign curiosities after you get home. 

Her boys take us to a cocoa-nut orchard, pluck off" the nuts, 
split them with a sharp cleaver, and pour their milk into a glass. 
We drink in honor of the host. An old man runs up to us, with 
nothing on him but a pair of white pants, a cleaver stuck in his 
girdle behind, and a straw hat. He offs hat with both hands, and 
bows low to the ground. Had Darwin seen him he w^ould have 
protested that he was the man primeval, built ages before the En- 
glish Adam, who is (to Darwin) the height of attained, if not attain- 
able, civilization. His face looked very like a monkey's, and his 
posture also. Yet this ape of modern false science was a gentle- 
man of fortune, and industry, and sagacity, who had subdued five 
hundred acres of this wild land, and made himself a property worth 
six thousand dollars even here, many times that in the States. He 
raises hemp and cocoa-nuts, and is rich. His manners were gra- 
cious, and when he found he could not talk with us, he bid us 

3 



32 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



good-bye politely, and hastened away as fast as if he had a note to 
pay, and only five minutes more left to pay it in, and no money to 
pay it with. His boys remained, and waited on us. One of our 
party offered him a couple of cigars, which he passed over to a 
little girl of his tenant's, being too much in a hurry, if not too much 
of a gentleman, to smoke. So our primitive gorilla disappears in 
a farmer of to-day. So will all scientific humbugs disappear. 

The chief business of this place is the raising of jenequen, or 
hemp, pronounced heneken. It has the thick, green, sharp leaf of 
the cactus. A large traffic has sprung up in it at this port ; not 
less than five thousand bales are exported annually to New York, 
or two million pounds. It is used in making ropes, and has a grow- 
ing and extensive value. It is worth six cents a pound here, and 
pays about ninety-five per cent, on its cost of culture, so that it is 
a very valuable article of commerce. Its finer varieties are as soft 
as silk. |[t is destined to be more and more a source of union be- 
tween Yucatan and the United States. 

We roll in the warm surf of the sea — a Christmas luxury not 
enjoyed at Newport and Long Branch, but which was delightful 
at Progresso — and dine at our friend, the collector's. 

There is no church in the place, and this chief man, though a 
Romanist, invites me to establish our church here. The chief cor- 
ner of the grand plaza is still unoccupied, and the Methodist ca- 
thedral can be built there. It shows our opportunities, at least, 
and the liberality of this people, though perhaps it is too much like 
the sort we find in Western towns, where they will give any body 
a church lot in order to make the other lots the more valuable. 
Yet these simple-hearted natives ought to have a Sunday-school 
and Christian teachings, songs, and ordinances ; and we hope some 
time to see the offer accepted, and such a church flourishing at 
Progresso. Some Christian body will undoubtedly take posses- 
sion of the field, as a preliminary to the city near by, which is white 
unto this harvest. Whoever enters into this inheritance will find a 
pleasant possession. 

Our day's delights have kept us beyond the hour appointed by 



RETURN TO THE STEAMER. 32 

th'e captain, and we pull for the steamer with fears that she will 
pull away from us before we can reach her. The wind is contrary, 
the rowers weary, the night deepens, the waves roll, the lantern on 
the ship becomes a star. We fire pistol-shots and kindle paper, 
and they send up colored lights and fire the cannon. Our fires 
and shots they do not see or hear. Two hours of fear at being 
deserted, of questionings as to what to do in such extremity, of 
yet greater fears that the big black waves rolling high about and 
beneath us will roll bigger and blacker above us, of tests of in- 
ward quality of courage and faith, in which the most believing 
do not always prove the most courageous, and we come up at 
last, with great rejoicing, to the huge ship, with its many lights 
and warm cheer, looking like the palace of home and heaven, 
riding upon the waters of death. So may that palace yet welcome 
us all ! 

The stay-aboard company are thoroughly alarmed at our long 
absence. But when the fear and congratulations at our safety are 
over, they follow the example of the Irish mother and her lost 
child, so affectingly depicted by Hood, whose wailings over him 
lost are speedily replaced by scoldings at him found. To protect 
ourselves against their retorts, the rhymist of the party prepared, 
on the rolling deck, a defense, which, like all poetry, has permitted 
exaggerations mingled with its truth — a sort of wine-and-water fic- 
tion and fact that can be easily separated. As a memento of a 
lazy moment it may be worth inserting here. If one seeks to sing 
it, he can employ the tune of " My Maryland," which is the old 
college air of " Lauriger." 

" The' scoffer's boat is off thy shore, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan ; 
Our feet are on the collector's floor, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 
His cocoa-milk and grapes are sweet, 
The cooling breezes gently greet. 
His household dames are mixed and neat, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 



34 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

" The dinners that we find in thee, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan, 
Surpass all else in luxury, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 
There 're monkey tongues and lizard steak, 
And parrot's brains and chocolate ; 
What cdrne strange and delicate. 

In Yucatan, my Yucatan. 

" The jenequen is growing fine 

In Yucatan, my Yucatan, 
To make the hemp for rope and twine, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 
The hacienda, with its trees • 
Of cocoa fluttering in the breeze. 
Whose fruit is tossed us by monkeys, 

That's Yucatan, my Yucatan. 

" There Darwin finds his primal man. 

In Yucatan, my Yucatan, 
Of monkey looks, but sharp as Yan', 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 
He makes his bow with double grace. 
His pants alone are in their place, 
His gait is a Chicago pace, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 

" Rings on each finger and each toe, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan ; 
The ladies ornament them so, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan. 
White robes and thin to ankles go ; 
Night wrapped in day, a pleasant show ; 
Such are the dames of Progresso, 

In Yucatan, my Yucatan. 

" Oh, 'tis a pleasant land to see, 
Yucatan, my Yucatan, 
Lying along that summer sea, 
Yucatan, my Yucatan. 



GOOD WISHES. 

Long will its memories linger sweet 
Of flowers and shells, and mules so fleet, 
In our far-off and cold retreat, 
Yucatan, my Yucatan. 

' May churches, schools, and enterprise, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan, 
Gladden thy golden sands and skies, 

Yucatan, my Yucatan; 
May railroads, built by Palmer Co., 
Carry great crowds to Progresso, 
And Parish into parishes grow, 

In Yucatan, my Yucatan !" 



35 



36 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR, 



III. 

THE SEA -PORT. 

Under the Cocoa-nut Palm. — The Plaza. — The Cathedral. — No Distinction on 
account of Color either in Worshiper or Worshiped. — The Watering-place 
of Cortez. — How the Palm looks and grows. — Other Trees of the Tropics. — 
Home Flowers. — July Breakfast in January. — Per Contra, a Norther. — Its 
Utility. — Harbor and Fort. — Size and Shape of the City. — Its Scavenger. — 
Its Houses. — Street Life. — The Lord's Day. — First Protestant Service. — The 
Railroad Inauguration. 

My friend, Theodore Cuyler, has written many a racy talk for 
The Evangelist, with the heading "Under the Catalpa." He is 
outdone this time — a hard thing to do. He can not write " Under 
the Cocoa-nut Palm ;" nor can he write, as I might also, " Under 
the Tulipan," whose great scarlet blossoms are now blushing over 
my head ; nor " Under the Chinese Laurel," which a slight change 
in my seat would enable me to do; nor "Under the AustraHan 
Gum-tree," a tall elm-like tree, first brought here by Maximilian, 
and which rushes up to forty and sixty feet in a few years, in this 
hot air and soil. I have made a point on him, though it took 
many a point by sea and land, and many a mile from point to 
point, to gain even this slight advantage. 

I am sitting on a green slat-wood and iron lounge, such as are 
scattered about the Public Garden of Boston and the Central 
Park of New York, though they are not much occupied there after 
this fashion on this New-year's-day. The Plaza de la Constitu- 
tion, the only plaza of Vera Cruz, is where this bench is located, a 
square of about three hundred feet to a side, which is well filled 
with trees and shrubs of every sort of tropical luxuriance, with 
flowers of many hues and odors, a large bronze fountain in its cen- 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE. 



37 



tre, and benches girdling its circumference. Carlotta's gift is this, 
they say, to the city. 

The sun lies hot on the house-tops, and wherever it can strike 
a pavement. The general costume consists of a shirt and pants : 
the shirt white, short, plaited all around, and worn often by the 




peasantry on pleasure-days as an outer garment — a not unseemly 
arrangement. Every body is in gay costume, for is it not the first 
day of the year? And, in addition, does not the daily morning 
paper, named El Progresso, on the ground, probably, that it never 



33 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

progresses, declare that it is an extra festival-day, because on this 
day occurred the circumcision of Saint Odilon, and the birth of 
Saint Euphrosyne the Virgin ? Who these are, it does not deign 
to declare. 

But that sun creeps round the corner of the church on this seat, 
and blazes so fiercely that I must fly or be consumed. Another 
cocoa-nut palm welcomes me ; really another angle of the great 
church on the opposite side of the street. 

That church has just concluded its service — a service without 
song, or preaching, or audible prayer, or aught else but genuflex- 
ions and osculations, and mutterings and millinery. Yet it was 
filled with women and children dressed in their best attire, and in 
one respect was ahead of any church I have ever seen in America : 
all classes and colors meet together. On the same bench sits the 
Beacon Street lady, in her silks and laces, and the poor beggar in 
her blue tunic, with her mantle carefully brought up on her head 
in the church, "because of the angels." The Indian, Negro, Span- 
iard, all are here, often rolled together in one. Not the least 
dressed and genteel are these Indian dames of high degree. 
When shall our better type of faith and worship equal this in its 
one grand principle, " Ye are brethren .?" How hideous a mock- 
ery must a white and a colored church appear to the Lord, who 
is Maker and Saviour of us all ! The Romanist is putting this 
fact assiduously before the mind of our Southern caste -bound 
brothers. It is their only stronghold ; God give us strength to sur- 
pass them in this grace, as we have in all else. Not doing thus, 
we shall find pur excellent ointment sending forth an offensive 
savor, and their offensive ointment surpassing ours in sweetness. 
Among the wax virgins of this sacristy is a negress, the adaptation 
of this Church to its votaries being thus signally marked. 

I have just returned from an excursion to Medillin, some twelve 
miles into the country, the summer watering-place of Vera Cruz. 
It is winter now, and out of season. From March to June that 
Saratoga reigns. The consul-general of Mexico, Dr. Skilton, and 
the consul of the port. Dr. Trowbridge, were my companions — two 



FRUITS AND FLOWERS. 39 

physicians who won a high name in the army, and deserve and 
honor the stations they occupy. The air was soft as June, and our 
thin clothes, even to seersucker and linen, were all that we needed, 
and more. Flowers of every hue and fragrance blossomed along 
the way. 

The cocoa-nut palm abounded, of all heights and ages. The 
older ones had a smooth bark, made of its own dead leaves, crown- 
ed with long, bending branches, made up of spines like ribs going 
out of a backbone. It begins in these spines, and they seem to 
grow together as new ones shoot out, so that the trunk is itself a 
leaf. These leaves hang dead and loose in their upper edges, 
ragged and gray, but bind the trunk at their juncture. Every new 
burst of leaves gives a new cincture and a new raggedness. The 
rains wear off the rags, and the old trees stand smooth in bark, 
with the rings marked upon the bark of these successive growths 
of leaves. They are of every height, from a few feet to a hundred. 

You see on the ride many tall, wide - branching trees of the 
acacia tribe, with a light gauze leaf; others of deepest green, and 
wonderful for shade, which are not unlike the maple in shape, but 
are denser of color and shade. That is the mango, whose apple 
even the foreigners put as the front fruit of the world, and which, 
therefore, may have been the very apple that tempted Eve and 
ruined Adam. 

I have not yet followed the example my first mother and father 
set me, if this be the fruit, and I can not therefore say how strong 
was their temptation ; for though the leaf be green exceedingly, 
the time of the mango is not yet. The banyan, orange, banana, 
and other trees, too numerous to mention, especially when you do 
not know their names, throng the road to Medillin. The convol- 
vulus, or morning - glory, of every color covers the roadside, with 
its running vine and flowers. And there, on a little marsh, raises 
its sweet and lovely cup, the water-lily, blooming here just as de- 
liciously, and just as superior to all rivals, on this January the first, 
as it will blossom unrivaled in the ponds of New England the July 
following:. 



40 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

A stumpy old man brings a bouquet of roses, common blush 
and white, for which we pay two reals, or twenty-five cents, and 
that is as much again as he expected. In this we count thirty- 
eight large double roses in blossom, with buds many. Had that 
been bought for a New York table on this New-year's-day, it would 
have cost nearer ten dollars. 

The country people are coming to town ; for it is somebody's 
feast-day, and the railroad opening too. This modern secular 
and ancient ecclesiastical holiday, joined together, is too much for 
the Aztec. So he has donned his spotless white, and she her spot- 
less gray ; for the female human bird, like the feathered biped, is 
here less gorgeously arrayed than its male. Off they tramp to the 
city. His shirt, plaited and polished before and behind, depends 
over like-lustrous trowsers, well buttoned on the side with tinkling 
bell-buttons that rattle, if they do not ring, to the music of his go- 
ing. Some are on horseback. Two trotting near the track get 
frightened at the cars, and back their steeds from the path. A 
broad ditch is behind the narrow way, and one of the horses 
plunges therein and tips his clean rider over into the black mush. 
A loud laugh is all the consolation he gets for the splash and its 
ruin of his holiday costume. 

Medillin is a town of sheds, roofed with thatch, and a few houses 
of brick or wood, with broad arcades for drinking, dancing, and 
gambling. The season not being on, none of these were going 
on, except a breakfast or two, which were excellent. It certainly 
seemed out of place to wander round that open garden, full of 
roses and oranges and all manner of hot - house plants, on this 
New-year's morning, and to sit in the open hall, eating as delight- 
ful breakfast as my "International Moral Science Association" 
brother of Ireland ever got up at somebody else's expense. But 
the cool hall was a pleasant refuge from the heat, and we found the 
watering-place refreshing in January. A river, used for bathing, 
makes it the favorite resort of Vera Cruzians. Cortez frequented 
it, and built a chapel there. He seems to have done that every- 
where ; piety and impiety being nearly equal in him. 



THE ''NORTHERN 41 

As we go to the cars, I measure the leaves of HHes growing 
wild along the track. From the central joint to the tip, I could 
lay my arm from the elbow to the tip of the finger — ^just a cubit, 
or a foot and a half The whole leaf was over two feet in length, 
and of corresponding breadth. This was the size of nearly all of 
them. An Indian and his wife were gathering oranges. Huge 
fruit, as big as small pumpkins, hung from bushes not unlike the 
quince. Such is this land ; are you not home-sick for it ? If so, 
let me make you contented to stay where you are, by trying to de- 
scribe that indescribable horror which you must or may encounter 
to get here. 

I had heard of simoons and cyclones, and hurricanes and Hat- 
teras storms, but till I touched this Gulf steamer I had never 
heard of a "Norther." I began to hear hints about its possibil- 
ity, and how, when it raged, no ship could leave Havana or land 
at Vera Cruz ; that it occurred about every four or five days this 
season of the year, and that every seaman disliked and even 
dreaded it. 

Our vessel had pushed on a swift and even keel to the last day 
but one. I was about concluding that the semi - qualmish state 
would not develop any more violent stages, and was even getting 
ready to follow Byron, and stroke the mane of this wild beast of 
the world, that rages and devours from shore to shore — even as a 
scared child, holding firmly to the parental arms and legs, may rub 
its tiny hand on the neck of the huge dog that has frightened it — 
when, lo ! at five o'clock in the morning, after leaving Progresso, I 
was slung violently up and down, clinging in desperation to the 
door of the room, which was, fortunately, fastened back to my 
berth. The ship seemed on its beam -ends. Up and down she 
flung herself in a rage of fear or madness. Up and down we fol- 
lowed, sick and scared. 

After much ground and lofty tumbling, the berth is abandoned, 
with great reeling and sickness, for the deck. Perched among the 
shrouds that lash the base of the mast, or reeling along the side of 
the drunken vessel, I enjoy the Norther. The sea is capped with 



42 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

foam ; the waves leap short and high ; the boat goes down these 
sharp and sudden hills of water, and is hurled back on its haunch- 
es by trying to mount the hills coming up on the other side of the 
hollow. How she staggers and falls down, and picks herself up 
and is knocked down again, and blindly rears and as blindly falls ! 
Her freight has been chiefly left at Havana and Progresso, and so 
she behaves worse than she might have otherwise done. I had 
never seen so crazy a creature on the sea. I thought the long 
swells of the Atlantic, the short surges of the Mediterranean, and 
even the chopping waves of the English Channel and the Huron 
Bay bad enough, but this Mexican Norther excelled them all. Do 
you wish to pay that toll to see this garden ? It will pay ; for sea- 
sickness, like toothache, never kills. 

There was not much done that day except to lurch with the 
lurching ship. " Now we go down, down, downy, and now we go up, 
up, uppy." Now on your back, and now on your face. Still we 
contrived to sit it through, and to have a good talk on religion with 
a Boston gentleman, who, like so many of his city, had no religion 
to talk about, being not Christian, nor even Pagan, not so much 
infidel, as faith-less : not anti-believing as non-believing. Like that 
ignoVant backwoodsman who, being asked if he loved the Lord Je- 
sus, honestly replies, " I've nothing agin him." Yet he that is not 
for Him, having known of Him, is against Him, and so non-Chris- 
tianity is anti-Christianity. 

How much is Christian faith needed in that Christian town ! 
And what a record have they to meet who have taken away our 
Lord, and given the people a stolid self-reliance, or more stolid 
fatalistic indifference as their only religion ! But our lively friend 
could sing— what Bostonian can not, since the Jubilee ? — and he 
mingled " Stab at Mater," "Coronation," and camp -meeting mel- 
odies in a pure Yankee oUa-podrida. May this song-gift yet lead 
the singer to the grace it springs from and to ! 

Toward night the winds and waves abated slightly, and after 
midnight they lulled to sleep. But long after the Norther had 
blown itself away, the waves rolled slow and steady but deep and 



A GOOD WORD FOR THE NORTHER. 43 

long, as if they themselves were tired out, and the steamer swung 
to and fro evenly and weariedly. 

As the storm is gone, so that more violent one of sin shall blow 
over, and the race of man, like a convalescent but tired child in 
the arms of its mother, shall rock itself to sleep in the arms of its 
Saviour, God. Cowper's words, so befitting that sick and vireary 
ship-company, are not an unbefitting prophecy. I was comforted 
with them as I lay in that tossing berth : 

" Six thousand years of sorrow have well-nigh 
Fulfilled their tardy and disastrous course 
Over a sinful world ; and what remains 
Is merely as the working of a sea 
Before a calm that rocks itself to rest." 

Are our present waves the passing away of this Norther of sin? 
Is the level sea of universal grace and goodness appearing? It is ; 
but perhaps many a Norther must yet rage before the heavenly and 
perpetual calm prevails. 

A good word may be said for most of God's creatures, and 
the Norther has its bright side. But for it. Vera Cruz could 
not exist. It may create qualms on shipboard, but it drives away 
the yellow fever on shore. Its coming concludes that pestilence, 
though it is said to also conclude the lives of all prostrated with 
the disease at its coming, their relaxed system succumbing to its 
over-tonical force. So we may accept the lesser evil in view of the 
greater blessings that it brings, and rejoice that Northers rage in 
the Gulf of Mexico. 

The reason why this storm prevents a landing is that there is 
no real harbor here, and the situation of the port is such that the 
north wind drives the waves straight on and over the mole, its 
only dock, which is a few hundred feet long. The waters rise and 
roll over this wharf, and prevent all landing. Indeed, the waves 
could hardly allow a boat upon them, were a landing possible, so 
high they mount. When it is on, communication ceases, and visit- 
ors to the ship, or sailors on the shore, have no means of getting to 



44 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

their own place. Yet all this could be cured by a few score 
thousand dollars. The castle lies two miles, perhaps, from the 
shore, and reefs extend a third of the way toward it on the north- 
ern side. A breakwater could easily be built over the rest of the 
way, and the harbor of Vera Cruz laugh at the peril of the north 
wind, and enjoy its refreshment. Some time the government will 
make this improvement. Yet " manana " (to-morrow), they would 
say here : their word for all enterprises and duties. 

Our Norther has subsided, and we enter the sunny bay, on 
the last Saturday morning in December, as warm and delicious a 
morning as ever broke over New York Bay in June, as George L. 
Brown's painting of that city superbly represents. The walls of the 
city of the True Cross break on the eye — a speck of superior white- 
ness amidst the glittering sand-dunes that inclose it, but a white- 
ness that does not increase as you approach. Small palms scant- 
ily scatter themselves among the sand-hills, and thin grass and a 
parched vegetation, though far-away hills lift a solid terrace of 
green to your fascinated eyes, and, towering over all, Orizaba raises 
its snow-capped spear, a peak of unequaled beauty. All the zones 
are around and before you, from Greenland to Abyssinia. 

The harbor is empty of shipping ; only four or five vessels lie on 
its dangerous sea. The famous castle, San Juan d'Ulloa, is a large, 
round fortress, of a dingy yellow. A castle impregnable, it is said, 
except to assault, which was never attacked that it was not taken. 
Cortez professed to expend thirteen millions upon it ; and Charles 
the Fifth, once calling for his glass, and looking through it, west- 
ward, was asked what he was looking for. " San Juan d'Ulloa," he 
replied. " I have spent so much on it, that it seems to me I ought 
to see it standing out on the western sky." 

We anchor off the costly folly, and are greeted by officials and 
friends. Boats soon put us on the mole, and we are in the sea-port 
of the United States of Mexico. 

This city consists of sixty acres, be they more or less, inclosed 
with a begrimed wall, from ten to twenty feet in height. Boston 
Common is not far from the size of Vera Cruz ; its burned district 



STREETS AND ARCADES OF VERA CRUZ. ^y 

considerably larger. It has one principal street running back 
from the shore a single block. A horse railway passes down this 
Calle Centrale once a half hour or so, and for a real, or twelve and 
a half cents, takes you the near a mile that street extends. But it 
takes no one, as all who have money have no desire to leave the 
block or two about the plaza ; and all who are obliged to go from 
centre to circumference have no money. So the Spanish Yankee 
fails of success in this enterprise. 

One street runs parallel with the Centrale the entire length of 
the city, and two shorter ones fill out the arc that the rear wall 
makes. Eight or ten cross these at right angles. That is all of the 
True Cross, viewed geographically. Numerically, it has fifteen thou- 
sand inhabitants, of whom over one thousand are foreigners, and 
only about five thousand can read or write. The Indian popula- 
tion predominates in numbers, and the Spanish in wealth and in- 
fluence, though the Mexican is a conglomerate of both, and each in 
its separate or blended state is without social degradation or dis- 
tinction. 

Its chief street has two arcades, with little markets and tables 
for brandy or coffee sippers. It has a score or two of stores, some 
with quaint names, such as " El Pobre Diabolo" (The Poor Devil), 
over a neat dry-goods house, whose merchant thereby humbly con- 
fesses he does not make over " one per shent " on every two. An- 
other has B. B. B. as his initials : " Bueno, Bonito, Barato " (good, 
pretty, cheap). 

The streets are narrow, as they should be in hot countries. Tiny 
rivulets trickle down their centres, and disinfectants in the sickly 
season nightly cleanse these open sewers. 

Another and a more important source of its cleanliness is the 
buzzard. I had been taught to detest the buzzard, perhaps be- 
cause it was black. I had heard how unclean a thing it was, and 
was exceedingly prejudiced against it. But I find, to my surprise, 
that here this despised and detested creature is the sacred bird, 
almost. It darkens the air "with its flocks, roosts on the roofs, 
towers, steeple-tops, everywhere. A fine of five dollars is levied 

4 



48 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

against one who shoots one of them. It is the most privileged in- 
dividual of the town. The reason why.-* It is the street -cleaner. 
It picks the offal from gutter or sidewalk, and nothing escapes its 
hungry maw. Its business may not be cleanly, but its person is. 
It never looks soiled, but its black wings shine, and its beak is as 
white as "store teeth." It looks like a nice house -maid whose 
service does not make her soiled. It is a large bird, looking like 
the turkey, though of a different species, and of a broad, swift wing, 
that sustains it in long flights. It appears very solemn, the priest 
of the air, especially when it sits on the cross of the churches, one 
on each arm frequently, and one on the top. Once I saw two thus 
sitting on the top, one on the other, as quiet and churchly as 
though each were carved in stone. Hood says, 

'• The daw's not reckon'd a religious bird, 
Because it keeps a-cawing from the steeple." 

But the buzzard comes nearer that desert, and by its solemn air, 
clerical garb, and sanitary service, may claim a place in, as well as 
on, the sanctuary. Perhaps some foes of the cloth might say its 
greediness and determination to have the last mite, if alive, was 
also a proof of this relationship. At any rate, unlike the daw, it 
is the protected if not the petted bird of the city, and helps keep 
off the pestilence, which has a blacker hue and more horrible na- 
ture than the worst of its enemies ever attributed to it. Honor to 
this faithful black servant of man, as to those featherless bipeds of 
like hue, that are more worthy of our praise for their more excel- 
lent service. 

The houses hug the narrow sidewalks, each with a large portal 
opening into a roofless court, and with windows scantily piercing 
their second story. They very rarely go higher. Not a building 
inclosing the chief plaza is above this height. Hotel, warehouse, 
and governor's residence close with the second story. The third 
occasionally appears ; but fourth and fifth, up to seventh and eighth, 
with Mansard roofs — two stories more — these Paris and New 
York luxuries are here unknown. Why? Because the earth gets 



THE HORSE- CAR THE ONLY VEHICLE. 40, 

sea -sick here. Ex-President Hill's theory, that a fire is fed from 
below, and must be put out by pouring water on its base, and not 
on its summit, obtains here in regard to earthquakes. The earth 
shakes from below, and would topple down these towers on the 
haughty heads that dared to lift them up. So the city well-nigh 
reaches the Sybarite perfection Edward Everett Hale approves, 
and is hardly ever over two stories, and is much of it of his perfect 
perfection of one story. These houses are of mortar or stone, all 
of them, and very broad of base and thick of wall. They hug the 
earth so close that she can not throw them off She must tip her- 
self clean over, before she can turn these houses on the heads of 
their builders. Those builders' heads were level, and their works 
are also. 

The wind flows through the open windows, cool as the midsum- 
mer sea-breeze — never cooler. The streets have donkeys, carrying 
water in kegs, milk in bottles, charcoal (their only fuel) in bags, 
grasses for thatch, and other burdens. A carriage I have not yet 
seen. One is said to exist here, but it is not visible to the naked 
eye. A few horses are used, chiefly by the haciendados, or farmers, 
riding into town. Even the ladies turn out on foot to the grand 
reception to the President on the opening of the railway to the 
capital. The horse -car is the only vehicle, and that is useless. 
The city is a Venice, but for its mules and asses. 

The fountain at the head of Calle Centrale is a favorite resort 
for these few beasts, and for many water-carriers. There is abun- 
dance of water; and nowhere in this country, or any country, are 
there cleaner streets or superior baths. Yet buzzard and bath, 
free fountain and washed street, do not keep off the yellow fever. 
The walls, some think, cause it, as they shut out the winds — the 
only thing they do shut out, every foe easily subduing them. 
They should be leveled, if they kill thus those they pretend to pro- 
tect. 

The business of the city is quite large. Some houses do a mill- 
ion and a half a year ; for here come about all the goods of Europe 
and America that enter Mexico. But the houses that sret the trade 



5° 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




FOUNTAIN AT VERA CRUZ. 



are foreign, and chiefly German, so that the people of the country 
are still poor, poorer, poorest. 

The Lord's Day is an unknown institution in Vera Cruz. The 
Spaniards have given it the right name, properly distinguishing 
between the Sabbath, which they give to Saturday (Sabbato), and 
the Lord's Day (Domingo). We could follow their example. It 
would save much debate, and clarify and steady many a con- 
science, if we could see the Lord's Day in our nomenclature. We 
should then perceive its sacred delight and obligation. Yet if it 
turned out with us as with these, the name had better be left un- 
changed. Stat nominis sacri utnh'a ; and only that shadow stands. 
All else is gone. The shops are open, the workmen busy. The 
church is attended once, as in the mummeries this morning. Then 
the circus came riding down the street ] the clown and two pretty 



A VISIT TO THE CEMETERY. 51 

boys ahead, preparatory to performing outside the walls. It was 
the first band of music I had heard on Sunday since that which 
awoke me in Detroit last summer. How sad and striking the re- 
semblance ! Shall our German infidelity and mis-education make 
our land like Mexico ? Or shall a holy faith and a holy life 
make this land like the New England of our fathers ? As Mr. 
Lincoln said, " Our nation must be all slave or all free ;" and as 
One infinitely greater said, "A house divided against itself can not 
stand ;" so America, North and South, the United States and 
Mexico, must be all Christian in its Sabbath sanctity, or all dia- 
bolic. 

I walked out in the afternoon to the cemetery, feeling that the 
best church and congregation were to be found there. The way 
led over the alameda, or a short bridge across a tiny stream, 
which is lined with }'oung cocoa -iiut palms, and stone seats for 
loungers. Here Cortez once built a bridge ten feet or so- long, 
for which he charged the government three millions of dollars, 
making even Tweed lower his haughty front before this Castilian 
grandeur of thieving. The Church of Christ stood a little beyond, 
with huts of the poor near it — a church where funeral services are 
mostly performed. A poor old man was kneeling on a bench near 
the door, with arms outspread, and agonized face, muttering ear- 
nestly. Oh that he could have been spoken to, so that he might 
have been taught the way of life more perfectly, and might have 
gone down to his house justified and rejoicing in the Lord Jesus, 
to whom not one of his muttered prayers was addressed ! 

The Street of Christ leads out half a mile to the Campo Santo. 
Well-named is that street, if lowliest people are nearest him, and if 
the grave is his triumphant goal. 

The walls of the graveyard are high and deep. Tall obelisks 
stand at either corner. The dead sleep not in the open area, 
which is unoccupied, but in the walls. Tablets cover the recess 
that incloses the cofiin, and words of tenderness rather than of faith 
bedew the marble. Not the highest faith. No such beautiful 
words as are found on the monuments of the saintlv dead of Pro t- 



52 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

estant climes shine forth here. Northampton has no rival here, 
that choicest of grave-yards in its simplicity of elegance and rich- 
ness of Scriptural and Christian quotation. Mount Auburn is sur- 
passed, however. I heard the Misses Warner once say they had 
found scarcely any motto of Scriptural faith and hope in that cem- 
etery. It is as stony in its faith as in the hewn and polished walls 
that engirt each tiny lot. It has marble dogs, and granite sphinxes, 
and bass-relief expressmen, wreathed pillars, and statues of men of 
renown, but rare is a monument or a line of faith. It will strike 
others thus. Edwards, and Fisk, and Wayland ought to stand in 
marble among its statues, and Christianity speak from its faithless, 
glittering graves. Let those whose believing dead are buried there 
make them preach their faith from their sepulchres. 

Yet in the Campo Santo itself I found food for meditation, if not 
in its inscriptions. I gathered its flowers, growing wild and beau- 
tiful over its area, and returned as from a Sabbath-day's journey, 
strengthened in the Gospel truth and work. 

That evening, through the kindness of the American consul, a 
congregation of nearly thirty gathered in his rooms, and held a 
Christian service. " Rock of Ages " and " Jesus, lover of my soul," 
were sung, and the word spoken from " To you that believe, he is 
precious." It was the first service the Holy Catholic (not Roman) 
Church ever held in that city. It was good to be there, as many 
felt. We found young men at work on the railroad who were 
members of the Baptist Church. Those who were, in order or 
education, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians, were also 
present. It seemed as if the day-star was about to arise over this 
long-darkened soil. If schools were established here by Christian 
teachers, and a service held regularly in English, the nucleus of a 
church would be organized, and the work soon be extended to the 
native population. This first Christian service has not proved the 
last. Already the Presbyterians have a flourishing mission. Oth- 
ers will doubtless follow. 

The city is putting on its best bib - and - tucker, for to-morrow 
President Lerdo de Tejada is to arrive, and great is to be the re- 



NON-ARRIVAL OF THE PRESIDENT. g3 

joicing. The government residences are being tastefully arrayed, 
and coats of white, yellow, and blue wash are spread oyer all the 
buidings surrounding the square. I never knew before how easily 
and cheaply one can renew the face of a soiled wall. That cathe- 
dral looks as if built yesterday. True, if it should rain to-night, 
it would be badly streaked, but it can not rain, for 

" To-morrow will be the happiest day of all the glad New-year ; 
To-morrow will be, of all the year, the maddest, merriest day ;" 
For Vera Cruz is joined to Mexico, and Lerdo comes this way. 

This last line is not in Tennyson. 

To-morrow came, but not the President. Every body dressed 
himself in his best ; the streets were trimmed with lanterns ; a green 
pavilion was arranged at the station ; but he came not. Announced 
at ten, re-announced at five, the soldiers marched down the streets, 
all colors, officers and privates, and all mixed together, just as they 
ought to be in the United States. The people fill the balconies, 
house-tops, and walls. The boys jeer, and hoot, and whistle, as if 
they were Yankees. Still he comes not. 

Somebody drops a real in the passage-way, kept open for him by 
the soldiers, and a bit of a black boy, very pretty and very prettily 
dressed, is pushed out for it by older boys, white and olive, who 
dare not risk the attempt themselves. A soldier holds him back. 
His mother, a bright, comely lady, stands behind him, watching 
him with mingled fear and admiration. She is afraid those olive- 
colored gamins, of fourteen years or thereabouts, full of roguery 
and rascality, will burn her boy's fingers in pulling that most de- 
sirable silver chestnut out of the martial fire. 

While all, officers, soldiers, lads, and loungers, are intent on that 
shining mark, a bright boy, dirty and brown, in the employ of the 
street lamp-lighters, comes down the path to help locate some tem- 
porary lamp-posts, sees the real, catches it, and is off, amidst the 
laugh of the crowd. So the successful man is often the last on the 
field of conflict. 

It grows dark, and we give it up, and so do many others. At 



54 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

eight he comes, but nobody sees him, and Vera Cruz has spent a 
day in waiting, and spent it in vain. The sound of the vesper bells 
floats sadly into my ears, as I write close under the towers of the 
Cortez Cathedral. How long before more Christian bells shall 
sweetly summon more Christian disciples to a more Christian 
worship ? How long ? 

The opening for Christian work is not surpassed by that of any 
city. It should be taken possession of by the true Church of the 
True Cross. The foreign element alone would make a large con- 
gregation. They can all understand English. The natives are 
horribly neglected, and would respond to earnest missionary effort. 
It is the sea-port of the country, and many sailors visit it. The 
danger from yellow fever is not great. Gentlemen who had re- 
sided there fifteen years laughed at the fear of strangers. It is 
certainly no greater for ministers than for merchants. It is a 
good centre of influence and departure. It should be speedily oc- 
cupied. Let Cortez's dream be fully answered, and Vera Cruz 
preach and practice the perfect gospel of Christ crucified. 



DANGERS OF STAGING. 



55 



IV. 

THE HOT LANDS. 

From Idleness to Peril. — Solitud. — Chiquihuiti. — Tropical Forests. — The Falls 
of Atoyac. — Wild Beasts iion stmt. — Cordova and its Oranges. — Mount Ori- 
zaba. — Fortin. 

Vera Chuz soon wearies. Even the generous hospitality of our 
consul, whose table and couch have been mine for days, could not 
make it lovely long. The mountains draw like the Loadstone 
Mountain of the "Arabian Nights." The consul-general comes 
from the capital, and by due persuasion is enticed not to wait for 
the president's return, but to climb back after the old fashion, 
the stage-coach and the robber ; for though the railroad is finished, 
that does not insure one a ride over it. Until the president re- 
turns over it, no one can, except he gets passage in a dirt-car, and 
takes the mountain morning coldness, without shelter, and almost 
without a seat. How long we may have to wait for his return, 
quie7i sabe? — (who knows?) — the universal answer here to all in- 
quiries, as mahana is to all orders. So we get as far as is allowed 
us on the railway, and then take to the stage. 

There are several reasons prompting us to this course. The 
stage is a vanishing institution. A week or two hence there will 
be no staging between the sea-port and the capital. We must in- 
dulge it now or never. Then we are told it is exceedingly dan- 
gerous. Robbers abound, and they will not fail to lose their last 
opportunity to black-mail the coach. So it will give the romance 
of peril essential to a first-class excitement. It is also a horrible 
road, and men affirm that they would endure any torment they or 
their friends could be subject to, especially the latter, rather than 
make the trip again — and then go and make it. Why not we? 



56 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

It has, too, the cumbres, or mountain precipices, so steep that 
we are led to imagine the stage will tumble off by sheer pull of 
gravitation and centre of motion ; the passengers rolling down, 
back first, faster by much than they rolled up. The peril of those 
"who gather samphire, dreadful trade," must be encountered, or 
Mexico is not truly done. 

And, lastly, the ride all night in a crowded coach full of garlic 
and tobacco and pulqui, and all abominable stenches, is set forth 
to frighten the novice from the attempt. But it only whets his 
appetite. The water feeds the flame, which has got so hot, 

" The more thou dam'st it up the more it burns." 

The ride in a coach full of dirty and offensive natives, over horri- 
ble roads, up precipices that incline the other way, they are so 
steep, among robbers, all night long — it shall be taken, and it is. 
Any thing to get out of Vera Cruz. That orange is sucked thrice 
dry. 

My companion attends the governor's soiree in honor of the 
president until two of the morning, and I turn him out of bed at 
three to take the unwelcome trip. We start at about four, sleepily 
and snugly tucked away in the luxurious cushions of an English 
rail-carriage. For night-riding, or any other, this sort is superior 
to the low-backed seats of the American car, though inferior to our 
sleeping-coaches. A nice nap, and the day wakes up, and so do 
we. The landscape stands forth in its summer warmth of color. 
We are out on the Tierras Calientes, or Hot Lands. They are mod- 
erately level, seemingly thin of soil, but probably more dry than- 
thin. The dog-tree abounds, and is in full blossom. Its white 
flowers look lovely, and make one fancy that something like peach- 
trees a:re growing wild over all the country. Solitud, some twen- 
ty-five miles out, is a station where coffee, cakes, bananas, and or- 
anges are disposed of to the half-sleepy passengers. It was at this 
place that the French, English, and Spanish ambassadors held 
the convention which resulted in the invasion of Mexico by Maxi- 
milian. They made but little, in pocket or fame, by that attempt to 



TROPICAL VERDURE. 57 

resist the Americanizing of America. It will be the last effort put 
forth by Europe for the colonizing of this continent. From Isabel- 
la to Victoria, for nearly four hundred years, the attempt has been 
kept up. The seed is well sown. Its future growth must be from 
our own soil. The crowned heads must lay their .crowns at the feet 
of this crownless one, on whose head are many crowns. The land 
lies idle and desolate for fifty miles. It is undoubtedly susceptible 
of culture, for rich tropical trees, with their heavy foliage, are not 
infrequent, and the open pastures are fit for grazing, and occasion- 
ally feed a few cattle. But the insecurity of property blights all the 
land. You can hardly cultivate bananas close to your door with- 
out fear of losing your crop through the wild marauders of the 
region. Life is of no consequence to them, compared with a few 
oranges or cocoa-nuts, and so the region is almost without inhab- 
itant. 

At the distance of about fifty miles the mountains draw near, 
the first terrace above the plains of the sea. 

Chiquihuiti (pronounced Chee-kee-whee-tee) rises along the land- 
scape, cutting the edge of the lowlands as sharply as a house-front 
cuts the land out of which it arises. This is the beginning of the 
table-lands of Mexico, and of the snow-capped volcanoes of Popo- 
catepetl and Orizaba. We wind up into it, and are astonished by 
the profusion of its tropical verdure. The scanty gleanings of 
the lowlands had not prepared me for this superabundance. The 
gorges are deep, the heights lofty, and from lowest depth to top- 
most height there is a flood of green. Such trees and leaves I 
had not imagined possible in midsummer, and this was midwin- 
ter. The trees were compact together, some of familiar forms, 
such as oak and birch, but of unfamiliar richness. Others among 
them were new members of the family. The acacia-tree was the 
largest and the most prolific in species, and it spread itself in huge 
branches, and towered above its fellows as by natural mastery. 
Yet it is light of substance, and some of these iron-like woods un- 
doubtedly and justly despise their vain brother. Many sorts of 
these hard woods are here, awaiting the horrid steam saw-mill that 



^^^^^^"^ OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. iH 

shall eat them all up, and ship them to New York, and make tliff 
green, grand wilderness a desolation. 

How sorry I am to be compelled to think that some Yankee 
speculator in lumber from Bangor to Brainerd will read these lines, 
and be up and off in the next steamer for Vera Cruz and the splen- 
did woods of Chiquihuiti ! Cortez did not sigh more for Mexican 
silver than these lumbermen will for these mahoganies, and rose- 
woods, and other equally polishable delights. Black-walnut will 
be of no account when the Mexican lumber reaches the Northern 
market. Give us a good fill, dear ancient forests, of your green de- 
lights, for the Yankee wood-sawyer is coming, and you will soon be 
no more. 

The roadside is lined with immense palms, whose leaves are 
each themselves almost a covering for the body, while the castor- 
oil-tree spreads its broad wing along the way, hated of all youth, 
loved of not all doctors. 

Convolvuli of every hue throw their vines and flowers over these 
palms and taller trees. Our old morning-glories were growing 
wild, and make our path a perpetual "pleached bower" of beau- 
ty. The orchids hang on the taller trees, or sit in nests in the 
crotch, parasitic plants of every color making the tree into nose- 
gays. They are a fungus, and seem to prefer decayed trees ; per- 
haps themselves decay them. Some that are stripped of leaf and 
bark glow like a June rose-bed in the radiance of these curious 
plants. There are hundreds of varieties, and have attracted of 
late much attention from botanists, and have even got into litera- 
ture. 

About ten miles up, the road winds round a gorge that sinks 
hundreds of feet below, and whose upper side comes together in 
the Falls of Atoyac. 

This is one of the most beautiful water-falls I have ever seen ; 
I might say the most beautiful. It is not stripped of its trees, as 
is Minnehaha, who sits shivering in her nakedness, as unhappy as 
the Greek Slave. Nor does it come, like that, from a level land- 
scape. The hills rise all around it a thousand feet and more. 



THE FALLS OF A TOY AC. 



59 



The sides of these hills from base to peak are densely covered 
with trees, whose leaves are almost a solid mass of green. The 
white water leaps from this green centre a hundred or two feet, 
into a curling, foaming river, and into a darkling mirror of a pool. 
The whole scene is embraced in one small circumference, and you 
seem to pause trembling on the bridge that spans a side of the 
ravine, before you plunge into a tunnel, hanging hundreds of feet 




OLD BRIDGE OF ATOYAC. 



above the lovely spectacle, with an admiration that is without par- 
allel in any small fragment of American scenery. May the Mexi- 
can Government preserve the Falls of Atoyac and their enchanting 
surroundings from the knife and the factory of the spoiler. 

Are there monkeys or wilder beasts in these woods, or parrots, or 
birds of paradise ? Of course they will all tell you that they abound. 
But when you ask one if he ever saw any, he shrugs his shoulders. 



6o OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

One gentleman says : " I ate armadillo steaks in a cabin on top of 
that mountain overhanging the Falls of Atoyac ;" but he did not 
kill the choice lizard, and so I receive his assertion with some in- 
credulity. Every body says monkeys are here, but nobody says he 
has seen them. They say that they have retreated away from the 
railroad, a sad reflection on Darwin's theory; for should they not 
accept the higher life to which their posterity have attained, and 
begin themselves to build railroads, and cut down timber, and 
speculate in corner lots, and eat armadillo? 

The parrot is here, but does not flash his plumage among the 
trees. Only on the perch of the ranches do we see his beauty and 
hear his ugliness. The cougar is reported present ; one gentleman, 
and he a man of veracity, declares he saw a young tiger, or old 
cat of this species, as he was resting his stage legs by a tramp up 
another spur of these mountains. But I think the real sight was 
when he sat at meat that day, and beheld on the table a roasted 
creature, with a great gray-yellow eye staring at him, and saying, 
" Come eat me, if you dare." Asking the waiter what it might be, 
he was answered, "-£/ gato del monte " (the cat of the mountain). 
Like they of the Rimini story, who read no more that day, he ate 
no more that day. That cat was a reality. Whether the cougar 
was or no, you must judge. Quien sabe? and a shrug is all I say. 

A run of a few miles through verdant fields, by coffee-haciendas 
and banana-groves and orange- orchards and tobacco-fields, and 
Cordova is reached. 

This ancient city of Cortez lies in an open plain, surrounded by 
mountains. The railroad leaves it a little to the right, and in a 
deeper vale, so that only its dirty church towers and domes are 
visible to the eye. It is a decayed town, but under the stimulus 
of the railroad may revive, especially if pure Christianity can come 
in here to energize and educate its people. Pure Christianity 
has come in. The Methodist Episcopal Church has already lay 
preaching in this city, and a society well gathered. The redemp- 
tion of this fine old Spanish town is begun. Let it go on to a mil- 
lennial completeness. 



THE BEST OF ORANGES. 



6i 



The fruit-sellers at the depot give us six oranges for three cents, 
and as many bananas for the same money. A picayune goes a 
good way. The oranges are very delicious. Havana and even 
Joppa are dry to these juicy Cordovas. They bleed at every vein. 
It is almost impossible to prevent their flowing over your lips on 
to your garments, like Aaron's oil. Could they be got into our 
Northern market, they would drive the mean little sour Messina 




ORANGE GROVE, CORDOVA. 

and the thick-meshed fibrous Havana from the fruit-stalls. And 
why not? Vera Cruz and Cordova are nearer New York by twen- 
ty days than Messina, and not two days farther oft" than Havana. 
The fruit-boats that go to the Mediterranean of the Eastern Con- 
tinent should come to the Mediterranean of the Western. Five 
thousand miles against a little more than five hundred, and this 
rich fruit against that lime, falsely called orange. Here lies the 



62 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



tropical garden of our land. Let us make it commercially our 
own. 

This commerce is increasing. One haciendado, or farmer, west 
of the city of Mexico, sends to market one hundred and thirty 
thousand cargoes of oranges annually from his plantation. A car- 
go is a donkey burden, and weighs three hundred pounds. This 
makes almost twenty thousand tons. I give this tale as it was 
given to me. If you ask whether or no it is true, I answer, after 
the country's fashion, QiiieJi sabe? You must remember that a 
hacienda often covers many square leagues, so that if devoted ex- 
clusively to this fruit, it could produce a vast quantity. Whether 
that statement be true or not, it is true that the fruit is the best 
of its sort I ever tasted, and that it could control the markets of 
America. 

The plains about Cordova are very rich, and bear all manner of 
fruits the year round. The scenery is as grand as the soil is fer- 
tile. Mountains thousands of feet high rise on the west and north, 
green at the base, bare and black at the summit, while just before 
you, as you look and move westward, stands forth that perfect 
Orizaba. 

I never remembered hearing of this mountain before, though a 
cultivated fellow-traveler informed me it was frequently referred to 
by English and Spanish writers. This statement set the memories 
and the wits of the listeners a-running, and a mass of quotations, 
as well adapted to this market as the " quotations " of change 
are to it, were fished up from the English poets. Probably a like 
knowledge, or ignorance, would have given like results from Calde- 
ron. The Cid, Lopez de Vega, and other like celebrities. For in- 
stance, had not Byron said, 

" Orizaba looks on Marathon, 
And Marathon looks on the sea?" 

and also told us, 



" He that would Orizaba climb will find 
Its loftiest peak most clothed with mist and snow.' 



MOUNT ORIZABA. 63 

And Scott tells of his experience here, in the well-known poem 
beginning 

*' I climbed the dark brow of the tall Orizaba ;" 

though its brow is whiter than a blonde Caucasian's ; and Sheri- 
dan Knowles makes Tell say, 

" Orizaba's crags, I'm with you once again." 

Emerson's "Monadnock" and Lowell's "Katahdin" are misprints 
for this splendor of a mountain. Surely English poetry is full of 
this name. Strange that one never saw it before. 

It is worthy of its fame, for in this hollow among the hiUs it puts 
on especial majesty. You are well up to its base. The distant 
ocean and sea - port view is exchanged for one near at hand. 
Though still sixty miles away, it seems to rise at your very feet. 
How superbly it lifts its shining cone into the shining heavens ! 
Clouds had lingered about it on our way hither, touching now its 
top, now swinging round its sides. But here they are burned up, 
and only this pinnacle of ice shoots up fourteen thousand feet be- 
fore your amazed, uplifted eyes. Mont Blanc, at Chamouni, has 
no such solitariness of position, nor rounded perfection, nor rich 
surroundings. Every thing conspires to give this the chief place 
among the hills of earth. None these eyes have seen equals or 
approaches it in every feature. It will yet win the crowd from 
Europe to its grander shrine. 

It is not difficult of ascent, in this being inferior to Europe's 
Mont Blanc, if that be an inferiority which makes its summit and 
the view therefrom accessible to ordinary daring. 

The three Mexican volcanoes have been often under foot, though 
not till Cortez came was this achievement known. His men, in 
the exuberance of their superiority, scaled the peaks near the city, 
and astonished the natives by their feat. They brought back sul- 
phur from the crater for the manufacture of powder, thus bring- 
ing the fatal mountain in more deathly shape home to the poor 
Aztec. 

5 



64 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. ^ 

A run of five miles brings us as far as we are allowed to travel I 

by rail ; and Fortin concludes the luxurious cushions of a first-class 1 

car, and transfers us to the hard seats of a diligencia. Misfortin it | 
might be phonographically called, for here exit ease and pleasure, 

enter peril and pain. , 



THE FIVE PASSENGERS. 



65 



V. 

ON THE STAGE. 

Our Companions. — Vain Fear. — The Plunge. — Coffee Haciendas. — Peon Life. 
— Orizaba City. — The Mountain -lined Passway. — The Cumbres. — The Last 
Smile of Day and the Hot Lands. — Night and Useless Terror. — " Two-o'clock- 
in-the-morning Courage." — Organ Cactus. — Sunrise. — The Volcano. — Into 
Puebla and the Cars. — The three Snow-peaks together. — Epizaco. — Pulqui. — 
" There is Mexico !" 

Behold us at Fortin, paying eleven dollars for our stage fare to 
Puebla, and three more, lacking a quarter, for three valises of 
moderate weight ; eating a hasty plate of soup and nice cutlets, 
with fried slips of potatoes, washed down with Mexican coffee, 
which is usually first-rate ; not so here. " Stage is ready !" jabbers 
in Spanish a brown boy. All boys are brown here. 

Our seats are taken in a Concord coach made in Mexico, a big, 
tough, lumbering, easy affair when the roads are easy j when they 
are rough, it jolts and jumps as if the spirit of the paving-stones in- 
spired it with their madness when they are whirled by a mob. But 
it is made to stand the jumping as well as the rocks that rock it, 
and tosses its human contents as unconcernedly as a juggler his 
balls. There are only five passengers, the first giving out of the 
dismal programme so faithfully served up to the affrighted appetite. 
These five men were the two Yankees, who, of course, had neither 
garlic nor tobacco about them, though one of them smoked all 
the time, but they were the best of cigars, and three Mexican gen- 
tlemen, on their travels to see the inauguration, one a son of a 
senator from Yucatan, and one an archaeologist, and his friend, a 
light, German-looking gentleman, who had just been exploring the 
regions of Ixmail, which Stephens has so well described and illus- 
trated. So the second terror disappears. The gentry chat freely 



66 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



^ 



with the Spanish-speaking Yankee, and all goes merry as the presi- 
dential reception the night before. 

The road that was said to be so fearfully and wonderfully not 
made, is broad and smooth the first ten miles. It winds down a 
steep hill for two or three miles. The torrid January sun pours its 
heat fiercely on the coach. The driver and his boy are in their 
shirt - sleeves, and the passengers wish they were. The drivers 
have skin and hair-covered overpants for the coming Cumbres and 

midnight. Cottages line the roadside, half hidden amidst huge 

t_ ' • ^ I 




A PEON S HOUSE. 



banana and coffee bushes, tall mango-trees, and flowers of every 
hue. The cottages are chiefly of cane, with sides not over four 
feet, and roofs rising ten to twenty feet, some even taller, giving 
them much coolness and airiness, the great desiderata. Brown 
women are busy at their household tasks, and brown children lie, 
like beetles, lazily in the shade or sun. The parrot screams and 
jabbers, and picks its handsome coat of its unhandsome parasites, 
poised on perches at times, but not always put in cages. Nature 



PEON LIFE. 67 

is jammed full of life. Who dreams of the snow-fall of death that 
now covers all that north country, and makes the poor so poor, 
shivering over their scanty fires? Are these poor not the poorer? 
you will ask. I fear the answer will be in your favor. And yet 
that does not make one like the ice and snow and zero atmosphere 
any the more. Give these poor New England's religion, and they 
will be vastly her superior in climatic conditions. 




GREAT BRIDGE OF MALTRATA. 



We plunge down the steep road, a race of the horses' heels 
with the coach's wheels as to which shall touch bottom first. 
The heels touched bottom all the time, and of course reached the 
bottom of the hill ahead of the wheels, but only a length ahead. 
High along the side of this exceedingly steep hill creeps the rail- 
road, making some of its most surprising feats of engineering as it 



eS OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

winds and leaps across this chasm. It becomes almost circular 
in its twists and turns. 

The coffee haciendas line the roadside. The bush is usually 
small, not over six or eight feet high, and spreading out like a bar- 
berry-bush. The berry is scattered over it, having a reddish tint, 
sometimes quite light. It is picked of this color, and ripened to 
its familiar brown by exposure on mats. You see it spread out in 
the door-yards, for this is its harvest-time. The sun is too hot for 
the coffee-tree, and so they plant bananas and other taller and 
thick-leaved trees among it to shade it from the direct rays. It 
wants heat, but not light. 

The Mexican coffee is among the best in the world, the best 
Colima berry at the west coast selling as high as a dollar and a 
half a pound. It is prepared very strong, and then served up with 
two-thirds hot milk, if you are not acclimated. As you become so, 
the proportion of milk disappears, until it is well-nigh all coffee. 
But the coffee-house boys always bring two pots, one of coffee, one 
of hot milk, and pour at your pleasure. Here, too, one of Dr. 
Holmes's proofs of the millennium is satisfactorily settled : 

" When what we pay for, that we drink, 
From juice of grape to coffee-bean." 

The juice of grape is still here a fabulous beverage. Logwood 
is too plenty, and grapes too few. But the coffee is coffee. As 
Thurlow Weed says he always eats sausage serenely in Cincinnati, 
because there hog is cheaper than dog, so here coffee is more 
plentiful than chiccory or peas, and one can feel assured that he 
tastes the real article. It will become more and more an article 
of export, and replace the Rio berry, to which it is far superior in 
flavor and softness, even if it does not rival the Java and the 
Mocha. Among the beverages that will drive out the gross intox- 
icants, lager and whisky, is this pleasant Mexican coffee. 

Orizaba has such an entrance as gave our critical companion a 
right to justify his charge against the road. The stones that once 
paved it lie knocked about on the surface. Deep holes abound. 



ROUGH RIDING. 



69 




VIEW OF ORIZABA. 



and the stage reels to and fro among the stones and pits like a 
very drunken man, and the passengers follow its example. A 
half mile of such a tumble and we strike the pavement, which is 
not much better. The whipped-up mules fly over its boulders, and 
we jump up and down like a small boy on a high-trotting horse. 
The street is long — very long it seems to us — the houses of one 
story, and of no especial beauty that we could see in our unseemly 
dancing. 

At last, " after much turmoil," we fly fex'ociously up to a long 
high wall, pierced with long high windows, well protected with long 
high bars, a single story, and striped prettily in fancy colors. At 
the big portal we stop, with a jounce worse than all that preceded, 
and beggars of every degree welcome us to the Hotel Diligencias 
of Orizaba. How they whine and grin and show off their horrid 



70 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

rags and sores ! What a commentary on Romanism ! It breeds 
these human vermin as naturally as the blankets of its worshipers 
do the less noisome sort. The more " piety," the more poverty ; 
the more of workless faith, the more of this idle work. 

The pieces of our broken bodies are put together after a fashion, 
and we stretch our legs an hour about the town. A live mill keeps 
the town chattering, and gives it an unusual Mexican activity. But 
for that, only earthquakes, of which it has a goodly share, and the 
arrival of the stage-coach, would make it sensible of motion. The 
houses are all of one story, because of these earthquakes. A 
Southern gentleman told me that once, when here, a wave came, 
and he rushed into the court, and clung to a post for protection, 
while the ground rocked like a sea. He never was so frightened 
in his life. Well it may cause fear, for the still and solid earth is 
about all the basis most people have for faith or any thing else. 

The church here has a picture on its fagade of a priest stopping 
with his hands a pillar half fallen, and a motto, which was too 
far up for my dim eyes to read, that probably told how he had by 
prayer prevented the falhng of that church. Mr, Tyndall will have 
to come down and correct these errors of faith, for as Pope, modi- 
fied, says (one might prove thus that he also knew of the great vol- 
cano near), 

" If Orizaba totter from on high, 
Shall gravitation cease if you go by?" 

Why not? Here a church seems to have been upheld. If not 
churches, souls certainly have. The overfaith of Romanism is no 
worse than the underfaith of Tyndallism. Between the extremes 
lies the middle path of truth and safety. 

A ravine goes through the town, luscious with tropical foliage 
and fruit. Above it hangs the chattering mill, which on its edge 
catches its water and busily makes the native wheat into flour. It 
was the first factory I had seen in Mexico, and therefore doubly 
interesting. Twenty-five dollars for a barrel of flour should gener- 
ate more grist-mills and wheat-fields, if protection is the true poli- 
cy. The narrow lanes run through banana gardens to the open 



THE WINTER RESORT. 



71 



fields, and grand black mountains rise close around, while the huge 
peak that gives the town its name towers, white and smiling in that 
golden midday, far above the clouds. 




RIVER AT ORIZABA. 

Orizaba is the favorite resort of the gentry of Mexico. Being on 
the railroad, it has outstripped its rivals, Jalapa and Cuernavaca, 
and bids fair to be the winter home of the big city. Some of the 
finest estates in the world are perched on its hills and hidden in its 
hollows. They enjoy the perpetual luxury of every tropical prod- 



72 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

uct, with the pyramid of ice ever cooling the fancy, if not the air. \ 
It will be the favorite resort as well of wanderers from the United 
States of the North. 

The cars here begin to really climb the Cumbres ; four thousand 
feet they accomplish in less than thirty miles. It is holding on by || 

the eyelids. 

"The boldest held their breath 
For a time." 

As they go, step by step, up the sides of these gorges, which " ope \ 
their ponderous and marble jaws" to swallow up that smoking, i; 
puffing insect which crawls like a beetle, its rings each separate 
car, along the almost precipitous sides of the huge barrancas, a ' 
hand thrust out on one side would touch the mountain, on the '\ 
other stretch out over thousands of feet of empty space between it i 
and the rocks below. The road is the finest bit of engineering on 
this, if not on any, continent. 

The stage-road twenty miles from Orizaba is the grandest I have 
ever traveled. It is smooth and pleasant of itself. The crazy 
Mexican ponies that it took so long to start are off, at last, with a 
leap and a whirl, and the one-storied, if not one-horse, town is left 
behind. The way is nearly straight, very level, and lined on each 
side, at the distance of a mile or two, with a succession of cliffs. 
They stand out of the valley as sharp as if lifted up in frame-work 
by human hands. Their origin is clearly volcanic. The sharp 
cut, the iron-like look, the wave shape, the striated lines, like the 
lava of Vesuvius, all prove their origin. They are two to four 
thousand feet high, I should say, on a passing glance. The valley 
between is rich in every fruit and flower and shrub. Here is a 
river gliding along, fringed with heavy willows, larger and compact- 
er of leaf than their temperate-zone brother, but of the same bend- 
ing and hugging nature. No English river bank was ever more 
lovely in adornment, or more hidden from the passing eye. The 
hills are mostly rock, without the possibility of culture, but on 
some of them grasses and trees have sprung up, and goats and 
sheep find pasturage and shelter. 



A BEAUTIFUL VALLEY. 73 

The pass is without parallel in any spot of Europe or America 
for its symmetry and grandeur. Interlachen has taller mountains, 
but not so perfect a valley. For a score of miles you never leave 
these mountain walls. Like the sphinx-lined pathway to Theban 
temples, they seem to guard the road to the distant capital. They 
end fittingly in true Spanish and Mexican grandeur, which is 
stately from beginning to end. 

The Cumbres are their stopping-place. These, too, had been a 
part of the sup of horrors forced down the resisting will by those 
who would compel it to abandon its purpose. 

We enter upon a still more romantic experience. The path 
winds up, back and forward, so frequently as almost to make it 
look from beneath like a series of parallel lines. This wall con- 
cludes the valley as completely as if it had been built by nature as 
a dam across its green river. There is a perfect pause. No way 
out of the valley in this direction but up this wall. It is not of 
rock, but of hard earth burned in this ceaseless sun, and support- 
ing a little herbage and a few trees. They also conclude the Tier- 
ras Calientes, or Hot Lands, of the shore and its first wide terrace. 

The valley itself terminates exquisitely. It lies, a basin of 
green, between the hills, a mile or two wide, the most of it under 
culture, and cut into tiny strips of varied tint, brown, green, golden, 
according to its products. A bit of a village, with a small, dingy 
white church, is on its southern edge. As we climb the steep face 
of the mountain this smiling parterre lies lovely below. It looks 
not unlike the meadows of Northampton from the top of Holyoke, 
only our height is twice or thrice as great, and its breadth is not a 
fourth as large. The setting sun looks lovingly on this bit of res- 
cued nature among the black and bare hills, and as we wind our 
way up, every new ascent makes it look the lovelier, as it grows 
the more diminutive. It is a baby landscape, and all the more 
charming for its infantile littleness. 

The sun goes down as we go up, and by the time the top is 
reached, the baby, in its cradle of lofty hills, has gone into shadow 
and approaching sleep. A light twinkles from a window far down 



74 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

there, like the smile of the eye before it closes in sleep, and the 
•mountain valley of Orizaba, with its petite perfection of a termi- 
nation, disappears from our view, perhaps forever ; for the stage- 
coach gives way to the rail -coach, and leaves this grand defile 
on a side-track. Its path is on the northern side of these hills, 
through a like but not more lovely valley. 

This summit properly concludes the Tierras Calientes. They are 
of two classes. The low flat belt which lies along the sea, and 
which extends back some fifty miles to the base of the mountains, 
and the first terrace of the hills. This terrace is about three thou- 
sand feet above the sea. It seems to engirt the whole Mexican 
range. It extends from Monterey to Oaxaca. Pronounce this 
"Whahaca," and you will find it easier to handle than it looks. 
On this shelf, not quite half-way up to the level of the capital, is 
found the most fruitful section of the country. Here are perched 
along the eastern side of the country such towns as Monterey, 
Jalapa, Cordova, Orizaba, Cuernavaca, and Oaxaca. This is the 
best region for the production of the banana, orange, coffee, sugar, 
and other semi-tropical fruits. The cocoa, pine-apple, rubber-tree, 
and other more tropical products belong to the plains by the sea. 

This terrace, too, contains the favorite gardens of the land. Its 
cities have been the winter retreats of the rich men of the capital 
ever since the country was occupied by the Europeans. Jalapa lies 
the lowest, being sixty miles north-west of Vera Cruz. It is said 
to possess the finest view of gulf and mountain of any city. It 
was on the high-road to the capital before the railroad took a 
more southern route. Cortez passed up its pass, and Scott follow- 
ed. To-day it is on a side-track. Its jalap, pronounced as it is 
spelled, brings grief to those children whose doctors adhere to the 
old practice. Should you adopt its Spanish pronunciation of 
halapa, you would avoid that disagreeable reminder. 

Cordova and Orizaba are on the same side-hill, and are to-day 
the favorite resort of the Mexican gentry, the latter especially. 
Here, too, are the repair shops of the railroad, so that quite an 
English-speaking population is growing up about this spot. Cuer- 



A GROUP OF horsemen: 75 

navaca, to the south, is on the same rich belt, and was the chosen 
seat of Cortez. We are yet four thousand feet from the top level 
of the land, though the crawl of an hour or two up the face of this 
dam has lessened that altitude. 

Our mules have rested while this lesson on topography was 
being given, but they must now hurry forward, for night and dan- 
ger are on us. Give your last glance into that deep south valley, 
that mountain-lined passway, that last of the villages of the Hot 
Lands. 

A group of horsemen passed us when we were half-way up, red- 
jacketed, broad-and-slouched-hatted, well armed, dark, and dan- 
gerous looking. Were they spying out the contents of the coach ? 
We easily change them into robbers ; not so easily, however, as 
they may change themselves into that shape. Night comes swiftly 
down. One realizes the rapidity of the flight of Apollo in Homer 
— he came like night — in these tropical countries. Our three 
Mexicans are left at Orizaba, and their places are taken by a rev- 
olutionist general, with his carbine, and a Frenchwoman who had 
been hostess at a hotel most frequented by robbers on the pass 
from Puebla to Mexico, between Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl — 
not very encouraging comrades for weak nerves. Our first station 
is a great robber haunt. The Red Bridge it is called — whether 
from paint or blood, who knows ? Fear says blood ; fact, probably, 
paint. 

The lady offers me a cigarette, which is graciously declined. 
She is offered in return a rich Cordova orange, hanging on its 
stem and among its green leaves. This is even more graciously 
accepted. But extremes meet. The next morning the orange was 
found knocking about the coach. So both the cigarette and Cor- 
dova failed of reaching the lips to which they were proffered. She 
lighted, and smoked, and expectorated as perfectly as the rebel 
general before her, and showed she was all ready to lead a revolu- 
tion or vote for Lerdo, as circumstances 3ind pesos might offer. The 
latter is the stronger circumstance here, as everywhere. Dollars 
outweigh scruples, whether of conscience or of the apothecary. 



76 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The unsuccessful revolutionist said the people were getting sick 
of Lerdo. He did nothing. They wanted railroads and emigration ; 
he opposed both. He was Spanish, and not American. When 
some one told Diaz, the rival candidate, that he would be the next 
President, " No," said he, " there will never be another President. 
By that time I shall be an American citizen." This is, much of 
it, the talk of the outs against the ins — mere bosh — Diaz probably 
being as little of an American as Lerdo after he gets elected. Yet 
some say that railroad enterprises will receive a check, and that 
the new President will install himself with the Church and re- 
actionary and anti-American party. I doubt it. He is too wise. 
If so, the revolution is only the surer, swifter, and completer. I 
believe he will verify his antecedents, and lead the country in lib- 
erty, education, and improvement. 

Our general debarks at the next station, and leaves the stage to 
three of us. Each takes a seat and stretches out ad libitum. Dust 
piles in on us as a covering, and, through the mouth, covering the 
inside as well as outside of the body. The moon shines clear- 
ly. " Tres jolie pour le voyageur,'" says the French lady. (Very 
pleasant for the traveler.) Indeed it is. The hills stand out clear- 
ly. The cactus hugs the dusty road, as thick-set as an English 
hedge or New England bramble -bushes on a country roadside. 
Its tall leaves tower like huge crowns, and show not so much the 
richness of the soil as the intensity of the heat. The organ variety 
is quite frequent, and looks, as it lines the road in the gray moon- 
light, as if we were riding through Springfield Arsenal. This does 
not make the terror less, unless we change the feeling, and fancy 
our road is through a vast organ. That changes the night to 
music, though we can not quite complete the quotation, and say, 

" The cares infesting the day , 
Have folded their tents like Arabs, 
And silently stole away." 

Cares, or fears, v;hich are the soul of cares, still encamp about. 
A few shots from the sun will scatter them all. Here we are, six 



i 



ARRIVAL AT SAINT AUGUSTINE. 



77 



or seven thousand feet above the sea, and here flourish the huge- 
leaved plants that only hot-houses can raise in the upper States, 
and they at their best in but a puny shape. Crosses at the road- 
side show where some have been murdered, and help along our 
fears and faith with their memento mori. 




THE ORGAN CACTUS. 

The moon goes down as we drive at ten o'clock through the 
still streets of Saint Augustine, as still as when we leave them three 
hours later. Not a person or creature is abroad. The adobe huts 
are all closed, and every donkey ceases to bray and every dog to 
bark. The court-yard welcomes us, and a supper, not over-relish- 
ed or over-relishable, and a bed, exceedingly relished. Out in that 
court-yard the tropical plants are diffusing their fragrance on the 
dark, soft, summer January air, as we hie us to our wished-for couch. 

Three hours, and we are roused up, and are soon off. The mule- 
boy, well clad now against the cold, waves his flambeau, and the 
coach rattles out of the sleeping town. 



78 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The host has loaned us blankets and pillows, and we make our 
beds on the racking seats. The roads are bad here, and no mis- I 
take ; at least they seem so in that two of the clock in the morn- 
ing. NapoleGn said that two-of-the-clock-in-the-morning courage 
was the most difficult to find. I agree with him. For the first 
time since starting I began to wish I had not come. The coach 
was cold, and knocked us about ; the road was rough ; the flam- 
beau burned out ; and aches and chills, and sleepiness without 
sleep, and perils by robbers, all made a mixture that required 
more than that sort of courage to face. 

But we were in for it, and there was no retreat. Like Cortez, 
when climbing this same range, we had burned our boats behind 
us. Nulla vestigia retrorsiiin. So on we drag our slow length. 
The mules seem terribly lazy. We are sure that the mule -boy 
does not stone the head ones enough, nor the driver lash the rear 
ones. I had enjoyed (I fear I must confess it), when sitting on the 
top in the afternoon, seeing the boy shy stones at the three front 
mules. There are three tiers of mules — two in the thills, three be- 
fore them, and three in front. The three leaders can not be reach- 
ed by the driver's lash, and so the boy who accompanies him picks 
up a bag of stones, and lets them drive, one at a time, hitting the 
creature every time, and just where he aims— flank, neck, or ear. 
They did not seem to mind it much, cringing a little, and picking 
up a little, but not much of either. 

The robbers do not make their appearance, the only disappoint- 
ment we suffer. The weary hours drag along from two to five, 

when 

" Night's candles are burned out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-top." 

How great the change that comes over the tired half-sleepers ! 
My companion had fulfilled one Scripture, and I, having com- 
pelled him to go with me to Orizaba, went twice the distance of his 
own accord. He wakes and chatters. Madame the cigarettist 
rouses and rises. As a fond lover said on a fonder occasion, " Up 
rose the sun, and up rose Emily,'' so is it here. Popocatepetl puts 



TEPEACA, AND DAY-BREAK. . 79 

in his appearance and Iztaccihuatl. (I want you to learn to pro- 
nounce these, so I keep inserting them. Do not skip them ; they 
are very easy when you get the hang of them. Take them just as 
they look, and look at them that you may take them, remembering 
that "hu " is like "wh.") How quiet and grand they look in their 
glittering whiteness ; the former a rounded dome of the Orizaba 
type, the latter a range of peaks, with less form and comeliness. 

" Our Em'ly " lights her cigarette, and smokes as calmly as the 
smoking mountains, which do not smoke. I have seen no sign of a 
volcano in any of them. She is from near Strasbourg ; and when 
she was told she was no longer French, but German, " No, no !" 
she exclaimed ; "Fran^ais toujours ! L^Allematid barbare .^" But 
she was not French forever, and if Germany is barbarous, it suc- 
ceeds. 

The Indian village of Tepeaca is soon entered. A town when • 
Cortez landed, and all Indian to-day, as is about all the rest of the 
country, it was a favorite place for him to retreat upon, and had no 
small influence in deciding his fortunes. It looks to-day as if it 
never could have influenced the fortune of the lowest nature, much 
less that of this lordly invader. 

Soon the flame-shots come. The sun breaks suddenly and su- 
perbly on the black and weary night. Never before did I so feel 
the power of that other verse sung at the grave's mouth, the begin- 
ning of the night of death, 

" Break from thy throne, illustrious Morn !" 

What a shout will ring through the universe when that day tri- 
umphs forever over that long, long night of dusty death ! 

A cup of chocolate and a fresh roll, served by Indian dames, 
and we rattle down hill twenty-five to thirty miles, to Puebla. The 
fields open wide to the bases of the P. and I. aforesaid. You can 
pronounce them if they are not printed in full. Corn-stalks are 
standing in the fields, and in some instances the corn is being 
gathered. Melinchi, a high mountain anywhere but here, rises on 
our right, opposite the snow volcanoes. It is named for the favor- 



8o 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



ite Indian mistress of Cortez, who, more than all other persons, 
helped him to conquer. It is the haunt of robbers, and its caves 
are dens of thieves. 

We stop only once to change horses and to buy some pretty 
steel trinkets, pushed into our faces by boys and men, who seem 
to find the only patronage for quite extensive steel works in these 
passing travelers. They offer little flat-irons, spurs, cuff-buttons, 
and other well-executed articles of embossed steel. 

The towers of Puebla soon come to view, and a long, wide, dusty 
thoroughfare, poorly kept up, leads us to the vale where the sacred 
city lies, seemingly close at the base of Iztaccihuatl, but actually 
sixty miles from it. We pass the fort over which French and 
Mexicans fought, by churches and churches and churches, into 
narrow, busy, well -paved streets, to our hotel court-yard, whence, 
after the immeasurable dust has been measurably removed, we go 
to the depot and start for Mexico. As we shall return here again, 
we leave it for the present undescribed. 

If you want to know that luxury of modern civilization, the rail- 
car, put between the beginning and ending of your journey a 
twenty-two hours' stretch of staging in a mountain land. Then 
you will relish it. How vast these plains outspread themselves ! 
What a change from the narrow terrace of the coast and the 
tumbled-up steepness of the intermediate country ! We climbed 
seven to eight thousand feet from the base of Chiquihuite to Tepe- 
aca, a distance of not over one hundred and fifty miles. It was 
all Cumbres. Here we have prairies as flat and broad as those of 
Illinois, but not as rich ; yet, unlike them, bounded with magnifi- 
cent hills, snow -covered and smoking, and black and comely. 
What would not Chicago give for just one of them? The road 
runs about a hundred miles through a dry, and lean, and level 
land. 

At Epizaco, the halting-place and half-way house between Mexi- 
co and Puebla, we get a glimpse of the three snow peaks, the only 
place where I have seen them together. Orizaba lies low; his 
stony British stare being seen just above the horizon, while his up- 



THE PEOPLE'S BEVERAGE. ' 8i 

land rivals stand out in all their proportions. He is lower, not 
because of actual inferiority, but because he is farther down this 
orange of earth. They are all of nearly equal height. 

Here, too, we get not only our last look at Orizaba, but our first 
at a filthy habit of man. Old folks and children thrust into your 
noses, and would fain into your mouths, the villainous drink of 
the country — pulqui. It is the people's chief beverage. It tastes 
like sour and bad-smelling buttermilk, is white like that, but thin. 
They crowd around the cars with it, selling a pint measure for 
three cents. I tasted it, and was satisfied. It is only not so vil- 
lainous a drink as lager, and London porter, and Bavarian beer, 
and French vinegar-wine, and Albany ale. It is hard to tell which 
of these is "stinkingest of the stinking kind." 

How abominable are the tastes which an appetite for strong 
drink creates ! The nastiest things human beings take into their 
mouths are their favorite intoxicants. If administered as medi- 
cines, they would never taste them, except under maternal and 
uxorial constraint. And yet the guzzlers of England, Germany, 
America, and Mexico pour down huge draughts of sour or bitter 
stuff, all for the drunk feeling that follows. 

The pulqui is a white liquor found in the maguey, a species of 
the cactus. It grows eight years uselessly as a drink. That year 
it becomes yet more useless by depositing in its centre a bowl of 
this juice. If picked then, all right, or all w^rong, rather. Just as 
this central bulb is beginning to swell with its coming juices, it is 
scooped out, and a hole big enough to hold a pail is made in the 
bottom of the middle of the plant. Into this cavity for three or 
four months the juice exudes, and is taken out by the pailful daily. 
If the plant is left alone, this bulb shoots into a stalk ten to twelve 
feet high, with a blossom. It is this blossom which is exhibited in 
our States as the century-plant — a seven to ten years', and not a 
hundred years', blossom. Then it comes to seed and naught. 

The chief traffic of the road is in carrying this stuff to Puebla 
and Mexico. It lies at the station in pig-skins and barrels, the 
pigs looking more hoggish than ever, as they lie on their backs 



82 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



and are tied at each leg and at the nose, stuffed full of this foolish 
stuff It ferments fiercely, and the barrels are left uncorked and 
the pigs' noses unmuzzled to prevent explosion. You will see the 
natives sticking their noses into the hog's nose, and drinking the 
milk of this swinish cocoa-nut, even as they are dumping it on the 
platform. Never was like to like more strikingly exhibited than 
in such a union of hogs and men. 




MAGUEY PLANT. 



Thousands of acres are set out with the plant, a few feet apart, 
in every state of growth, from a month to its octave of years, when 
it sees its corruption, and the people begin theirs. 

So have I seen, as Jeremy Taylor would say, the Connecticut Val- 
ley filled, from Hartford to Brattleborough, with a like large and 
deep green shrub, growing each by itself, putting forth broad leaves, 
not for the bowl of juice at its heart, but for the leaves themselves, 
which are not for food or drink, but for smoke. Shall the deacons 
and class-leaders and vestrymen of the only New England river 
valley find fault with these untrained and unchristianized Indians 



''THERE IS MEXICO:' . 83 

for making their soil to bring fortli only one article, when they are 
in the same condemnation ? 

And worse — for this maguey plant is useful for many things, 
though it has one failing : the tobacco-plant is useful for nothing. 
They use its leaves for all sorts of purposes : twine and paper, even 
needle and thread, roof and shelter. It is the good demon of the 
Aztec house. Though it does get drunk once in eight years, it is 
sober all the rest of the time. Our maguey is nothing if not nar- 
cotizing. True Christianity will, we trust, cure that defect, and 
make Mexico and New England and the West, in its abuse of 
barley and rye, alike free from the perversion of the gifts of God 
to our own unrighteousness. 

The train sweeps round the mountain range of P. and I., and 
we come to their western side. Puebla is on the east of them. 
The sun pours a flood of glory over yet more western summits. 
Our friend quietly says, "There is Mexico." 

It does not take long to look and admire. It lies under the 
blaze, a dim mass of points of fire. Its surroundings overcome 
us with their grandeur. Twelve miles away, where he spoke that 
word, is the eastern extremity of the lake on whose western end 
the city is situated. The brown spurs of Iztaccihuatl lie close to 
the edge of the lake. The land about it is almost on a level with 
it; salt marshes, in which the white alkali makes them look like 
snow. All round the farther sides of the lake black mountains 
stand. Other lakes lie hidden from our eyes about their bases. 
The water flashes in the setting sun.. 

Up these lowest spurs close beside us Cortez climbed and saw 
the wondrous valley and its waters, prairies, hills, purple and snow 
mountains, and resplendent city, and he vowed that it should be 
subdued to the Cross. With fearful expenditure of blood he accom- 
plished his purpose, and gave it a bloody cross, instead of bloody 
sacrifice of human life. Looking from a like point out of this car 
window, the product itself of true Christianity, may we not imitate 
Cortez, and pledge the city that lieth like the very mount of God, 
in magnificence unequaled by any capital of earth, and all the sur- 



84 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

rounding region, not to a persecuting and debilitating Christianity, 
but to one that comes without a sword, comes with an open Bible, a 
joyful experience, a holy life, education, comfort, refinement for all, 
the true Cross and Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, who created 
this scene and its inhabitants for .His own praise and glory ? May 
they soon all glorify Him ! 

Soon Otumba appears, where Cortez fought his greatest fight, 
without a gun, or pistol, or horse, reduced with a score of reckless 
followers to the level of his foes. As he debouched through yonder 
western hills on this broad plain, after the Noche Triste, he met here 
hundreds of thousands of the Aztecs in solid rank. Cutting his way 
through till his arm and sword failed, seeing the palanquin of the 
chief, rushing for it, and striking him dead, he sends a panic into the 
multitude, who let him through to these lower spurs round which 
we have just run, on whose farther side, looking toward Puebla, or 
Cholula then, dwelt his faithful allies, the Tlascalans, who received 
him, and helped him organize a victory that has continued until 
now. 

Not far from Otumba stand forth two pyramids of earth, like 
those of Cholula, called the Sun and Moon, each several hundred 
feet square and high, on a geometric line with each other as per- 
fect as a Hoosac Tunnel engineer could have carved them, each 
now surmounted with a tiny chapel, emblem of their conversion to 
the Roman faith. They are the only Aztec remains of mark in all 
the valley ; and they are probably Toltec, an ante- Aztec race, to 
which that warlike people were indebted for all their arts and re- 
finements, perhaps also for their horrid barbarities of worship. 

Guadalupe now appears on the right, a sierra not three miles 
from the city, the most sacred mountain of Mexico or America, 
and the most profane. A via sacra ran from it to the town, on 
which the penitent myriads walked upon their knees. Now our 
train rushes along it, regardless of shrines arid kneelers and other 
vanities of faith. The worshipers have accepted the situation, and 
ride to and from the favorite seat of their goddess in the railway 
car, even as pilgrimages are now going on over Europe in first 



IN THE AZTEC CAPITAL. 85 

and third class trains. The times change, and we change with 
them. 

The city glitters in the light of the setting' sun. Its last beams 
are gathering on the peaks of the silent Alps that stand forth on 
our eastern sky, as they had stood on the western when at Puebla. 
We have run clear round them. They change their light to color, 
grow rosy in that flush sent from between the saws of Ajusco on 
the west, and then turn to the awful white of death. 

Ere that the Hotel Gillow has welcomed us to its comfortable 
chambers, and we are housed like Cortez in the Aztec capital. 



BOOK II. 

IN AND AROUND THE CAPITAL. 



HOTEL GILLOW. 



89 



I. 

FIRST WEEK IN THE CAPITAL. 

Hotel Gillow. — Cost of Living. — The Climate. — Lottery-ticket Venders.— First 
Sabbath. — First Protestant Church. — A Praise Meeting. — State of the Work. 
— The Week of Prayer, 

Mexico begins well, though perhaps a good beginning may re- 
sult in a bad ending. It was Saturday evening, at setting of the 
sun, that we landed at the Buena Vista station, just outside the 
city. The last rays had left the top of Popocatepetl, but were 
lingering yet in a rosy cloud above the snowy deadness of Iztacci- 
huatl. These two giant guardsmen are set to watch this lovely val- 
ley that circles beneath them, a girdle of hundreds of miles, itself 
encircled with a lower but not inferior range of mountains. The 
drive into the city is through a long avenue of green trees, past the 
Alameda, or park, half a mile square, well crowded with trees in 
their best June apparel, down the streets of San Francisco and 
Profesa, round the corner of the elegant Church of the Profesa, 
into the Hotel Gillow, a new hotel built on a part of the convent 
property belonging to the Church of the Profesa, and confiscated ; 
but in this case built upon by the gentleman whose name it bears, 
whose son is a priest of this convent, who manages, if he does not 
own, the building, and who thus assists in desecrating a portion of 
the estates of the Church. 

If a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church may build, or 
control, and even give his family name to a hotel on sacred soil, 
a clergyman of the Holy Catholic Church may occupy a room in 
it without danger of profaning either it, or himself, or his church, 
or his landlord. So I enter a somewhat too sumptuous apartment 
for my means or my church. Yet, as it is the only one opening on 
the street, I take it till a less ornate one is vacated. 



go OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

That is already done, and .this writing is in a square and hand- 
some parlor, for which the sum of forty dollars a month is paid ; 
too costly for a long stay, but as Methodist preachers never con- 
tinue in one stay, it may answer for a temporary sojourn. 

Yet, costly as it is in this city, it is less than half, if not less 
than a third, what a like apartment could be rented for in a city 
of the States. With board at its fonda, or restaurant, at thirty-five 
dollars a month — four meals a day if you wish, and all you ask for 
at each meal — the whole expense is less than two dollars and a 
half a day, better for room and food than could be got in New 
York for four dollars a day. This may be reduced a little, yet not 
much. Board can not be much less, this ranging only at about 
one dollar a day ; but rooms, unfurnished, may be had for a fourth 
of this amount, and furnished, if you take one looking on a court 
instead of the street, in any of the hotels, for about one-half. In 
this hotel they are twenty-five dollars ; very clever rooms, too. 

This long preamble is given for two reasons : first, to give you 
assurance of the practical nature of our mind, so that any fantasies 
of eulogy over Mexico and its environs into which we may subse- 
quently fly may be considered exceptional, and not normal ; and, 
second and chief, that any of our ice-bound, snow- driven, sleet- 
covered, cold-racked, and so-on-suiTering friends of the North, 
who may have made more money than they are willing to give the 
Church, though not more than they ought to give, may know where 
to come and spend it and the winter. 

It is a paradise of climates. The air is just right every day. 
A light cape is all you want across your shoulders, and that is to 
be worn in the house rather than out-of-doors, for the houses are 
cooler than the street. Flowers and fruits are everywhere, and 
very excellent in taste and looks. Great bouquets of violets and 
other delights, packed in the mechanical French fashion, learned, 
it is said, from the French, and improved on by the Aztec, are 
offered you for a York shilling and upward. The flower-girls 
stand or sit at the corners of the streets, sometimes old men and 
women, with their big and little bouquets on the sidewalk about 



LOTTERY-TICKET VENDERS. 



91 



them. Strawberries, blackberries, and green peas are cheap and 
good, blackberries fifteen cents a quart, and others in proportion, 
while bananas and oranges, and 
the fruits less familiar to us, are 
piled up on the table and forced 
upon a gorged appetite. 

My windows stand open as I 
write, and the street cries come 
up into my ears. If I knew 
Spanish I might perhaps inter- 
pret them, but since, although I 
know English, I never can un- 
derstand the street cries of New 
York, I fear all the Spanish I 
can ever learn will not give me 
the inside of the calls of the 
street. I suppose this I hear 
the most frequently is from 
the lottery-ticket venders, who 
stand along the sidewalks, and are the most numerous class of 
operators in the city. They call the various lotteries the holiest 
names : Divina Providencia, Virgin of Guadalupe, St. Joseph, The 
Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Purissima Concepcion, and such like. 
The most popular of these is that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. 
The venders wear a badge bearing their number, and for a medio, 
or six and a quarter cents, you can run the risk of getting or losing 
from one to ten thousand pesos, or dollars. These lotteries are 
largely operated by the Church, and are one of its sources of in- 
come. The sale of indulgences is another. The right hand and 
the left rob in the name of God, feeding the poor victims with false 
hopes of a fortune in this life, and with falser hopes of a fortune, 
thus acquired, in the life to come. 

The morning after my arrival opened, as every morning does 
here, bright, mild, charming. The bells rang merrily, and my 
spirits were in corresponding mood. The Church of Jesus drew 




MEXICAN FLOWER-GHiL. 



92 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

my steps to its door. This church worships in a chapel of the 
old Church of San Francisco. You pass through a garden full of 
beautiful shrubs and flowers in full bloom and leaf, making the 
courts of the house of the Lord fragrant with these lovely creations 
of the Lord. This garden is about thirty feet wide by a hundred 
long. Our Lord lay in a garden of like sweets. Here he dwells 
to-day. And as we pass through we breathe that beautiful thought, 
from one whose pen we hope again to see serving the Lord : 

" And as Thy rocky tomb 
Was in a garden fair, 
Where round about stood flowers in bloom, 
To sweeten all the air, 

" So in my heart of stone 
I sepulchre Thy death. 
While thoughts of Thee, like roses' bloom, 
Bring sweetness in their breath." 

The chapel we enter on the side near its lower end. It is high 
arched, prettily frescoed about the altar, and is seated with chairs 
for about four hundred. It is nearly full. The worshipers are 
chiefly native, not over ten or fifteen Americans being present. 
They are dressed mostly with some attempt at cleanliness, their 
garb of the week being changed for the Sabbath. A few are in 
the soiled clothes of their daily toil. They are dark-colored, In- 
dian in whole or largely, and all sit as promiscuously as they ought 
to do in more enlightened congregations. They are singing " lus- 
tily." John Wesley would have declared that they kept that word 
in his Discipline, They all sing, and sing with all their might. 
I never heard camp -meeting excel them in this heartiness and 
gusto. The words were simple and sweet, and the tunes likewise. 
None of them were familiar till the last one, in which I detected 
an air I had known, and, after a little, found it was, "I'm a pilgrim, 
I'm a stranger." I give you a verse of this. You can all sing it, 
and will find it not difficult to translate. It begins, "I am going 
to heaven — I am a wanderer — to live eternally with Jesus ;" 



SINGING AND PRAYING. 93 

" Voy al cielo, soy peregrino, 

Vivere eternamente con Jesus. 
El me abrio ya veraz camino 
Cuando murio por nosotros en la crus. 

CORO. 

" Voy el cielo, soy peregrino, 

Vivere eternamente con Jesus."* 

They sung some four or five times, as often as in an American 
social or prayer meeting, intermingling their hymns with prayers 
read by the minister from a small pamphlet, with readings from the 
Old and the New Testament Scriptures, four Psalms, and a short, 
earnest sermon on The Wise Men — a recognition of the calendar 
of the Romish Church, which makes this the Sabbath of the Epiph- 
any. The two ministers who officiated were dressed in white 
robes ; one of them was white, and one an Indian. That was a 
good sight, these two brethren of diverse colors associated in this 
service. When shall the like be formally established in our more 
Christian America? I was gratified above my expectations at the 
spectacle. 

The bedizened altar furniture was gone, and an open Bible oc- 
cupied the place of the idolatrous host. Above it, in a circlet of 
immortelles in silver letters, was the name of JESUS. The service 
of song was full of Him. The prayers, lessons, and sermon were 
alike possessed. 

Whatever the ultimate form of this movement, it undoubtedly 
has the right beginning, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cor- 
ner-stone. It needs direction, organization, education ; but, as an 
outburst against a system which has so long suppressed this vital- 

* "I am going to heaven, I am a stranger, 

To live eternally with Christ. 
He opened me the true way 

When He died for us upon the cross." 

CHORUS. 
" I am going to heaven, I am a stranger, 
To live eternally with Christ." 
7 



94 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




FIRST PROTESTANT CHURCH. 



ity, it is divine. The Virgin is not here. Tlie Son of God is alone, 
as becomes His nature and work. It is a protest against that false 
mediation and intercession. He has taken the work into His own 
hands. They sing His praises, they implore His salvation. 

It is noticeable, too, as an incident of this movement, that they 
all are so full of song. The Rorgan Catholic Church does not 
cultivate or allow in its service congregational singing. It is as 
gay of plumage as tropical birds, and as songless. A trained choir 
gives elaborate masses and compositions with wonderful power in 
a few great centres of its worship, but its people do not sing. 
These converts are full of song. 

It was delightful to taste the freshness of this spring of salvation, 
breaking forth from this long-parched ground. It was like Elijah's 
little cloud brooding smilingly over a land from which the rain of 



THE WEEK OF PRAYER. 95 

grace had been shut off, not merely for three years and six months, 
but for three centuries and a half. May it soon burst in blessings 
over all the land ! 

I stepped over last evening to a chapel opposite my hotel, where 
one of these congregations was holding service in connection with 
the Week of Prayer. It was after nine, and the regular meeting- 
had closed. But there stood a group of twenty or so in the upper 
corner, "going it," like a corner after a revival meeting, in these 
same songs of Zion. Their leader appeared to be a young brother 
of twenty (the regular pastor was not present), and they all put in 
with all their heart and voice, a few sitting about on the bench- 
es enjoying the exercise. It was so perfectly Methodistic that I 
wished to go forward and tell them it seemed just like home. 
But a slight difficulty, somewhat like that which troubled Zacha- 
rias on one occasion, and which would last about as long if I staid 
here, prevented my making myself known and helping on the mel- 
ody. I might have sung, however, for the tune I had heard the 
Sunday before, and the words I could pronounce, if not translate. 
The favorite hymn, which both congregations sing with great gusto, 
has this for its chorus : 

" No OS detengais, no os detengais, 
Nunca, nunca, nunca ; 
Christo por salvanos dio 
Su sangre cuando El murio."* 

The way they bring out the " Nunca, nunca, nunca," is a lesson 
to many a languid and fashionable quartette and choir, a feeble- 
ness that has replaced and half destroyed our hymnal vitality. A 
half-dozen, who sing only a trifle better than the congregation, take 
away its office. Let these Mexican Christians lead them back into 
the divine way. They allowed parts to be sung by two or three 

* " Do not detain us, do not detain us, 

Never, never, never ; 
Christ for our salvation gave 
His blood when He died." 



gS OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

voices at San Francisco, and the whole congregation joined in 
the chorus. It was an inspiration and a lesson to our degenerate 
worshipers. 

No one will fail to recognize the spirituality and scripturality of 
these outbursts of grace in their long-oppressed souls. It is of the 
Lord, and, like all His doings, is directly and vitally antagonistic to 
the prevailing superstition. That prays to the Virgin ; this to Je- 
sus. That never allows the Bible to be read or heard of; this 
makes the reading of the Word of God a prolonged portion of the 
service. That suppresses the singing of the people ; this power- 
fully employs that service of Christ. That has the prayers mut- 
tered in an unknown tongue; this repeats them jointly with the 
congregation in their own language. That has no sermon in this 
country, or very rarely ; this puts the pulpit and its teachings as a 
part of every service. 

I should judge that regular training, visiting, and educating were 
needed, that the work requires the culture, system, and force of a 
regular Church order ; but I hope no forms or forces will ever re- 
pel, but only increase, the ardor and joy which inspired the hearts 
of these worshipers on that glad morning of the New-year. 

The afternoon was spent in an English service, the second in 
that language ever held in this city. Rev. Dr. Cooper, of Chicago, 
conducted it. It was in a private house. He is an able and expe- 
rienced divine, and his word that day was sweet unto the taste of 
the little company gathered in that upper room, a handful of seed 
on the top of this mountain-land, the fruit whereof shall yet shake 
like Lebanon. 

A suggestion was made at that service that the Week of Prayer 
be observed in this city. It was a novelty, surely, that this Week 
of Prayer should be kept in this lately most hostile town, where 
five years ago one could have hardly kept erect when the proces- 
sion of the Holy Ghost passed through the streets without endan- 
gering his head. 

But a change has come. The Presbyterian missionary. Rev. Mr. 
Phillips, opened his parlors, and an Episcopalian, a Methodist, a 



LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 97 

Congregational, and a Presbyterian minister joined with a few lay- 
men and sisters in offering daily prayer, according to the programme 
set forth by the Evangelical Alliance. It was good to be there day 
by day, to hear the songs of Zion in a strange land, to feel that we 
stood at the fountain-head of this river of life which is breaking 
forth here at the touch of God for the cleansing of this nation. 

The Congregational minister is Rev. Mr. Parks, sent out by the 
British and Foreign Bible Society to scatter that divine seed over 
this barren soil. He is a sower going forth to sow. He finds all 
sorts of soils. One colporteur in a three months' tour could not 
sell a single Bible. He contrived to give away a few hundreds. 
Another was beaten and driven out of Puebla, the second city of 
the country. Others find soil less rocky and less hardened by the 
wayside treading of centuries of Bible hatred, and some good soil 
is discovered, as these new movements show, which is yielding fruit 
already — some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold. 

Among those that attended these little meetings was Mr. Pethe- 
rick, a devoted Wesleyan, and Colonel Rhett, a Confederate officer, 
in command for a time of the defenses of Richmond, who, though 
he perhaps can not yet see that slavery is a sin, being a South 
Carolinian (which people, like their kin in Massachusetts, never 
change), still is willing to let that system "go," and is devoting 
himself with a praiseworthy zeal to general Christian activity. 

This Gospel Week will not be forgotten in the history of the 
Church in Mexico. It has shown to every foe of our Christ that 
the charge they may make against the division of Protestant Chris- 
tianity is not true. Most of its leading bodies have here harmoni- 
ously sung and spoken and prayed. They are a unit in aim and 
endeavor, in spirit and in life. They are less separated than the 
orders of the Romish Church; Jesuit and Carmelite, Benedictine 
and Franciscan, being more hostile to each other than any of our 
American Churches. This Union Week foretells the Union Year 
and Union Age of the Church in these United States of Mexico. 
May it be more and more one in faith, in work, in reward, here and 
over all the world ! 



^8 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR, 



II. 

FROM 2'HE CHURCH TOP, 

First Attempt and Failure. — At it again. — The Southern Outlook. — Popocate- 
petl and Iztaccihuatl. — Cherubusco. — Chapultepec. — Guadalupe. — The patron 
Saint of the Country. — Round the Circle. 

This is the highest of all the man-built places from whence I 
have ever tried to talk. I am sitting on the top of the finest church 
in this city, except the cathedral — that of the Profesa. It adjoins 
my hotel, and is easily accessible from the azatea, or flat roof, of 
that building. The sun is burning his way down the western sky, 
setting masses of clouds on fire with his effulgence. 

Two little girls, children of my landlady, have led me hither, and 
they are woefully frightened at a man in the belfry fixing the bells. 
In broken English, the older of the two makes known her fears, 
"Will he make nothing of me?" she cries. I relieve her, and soon 
she says her little sister calls her a " false fool" for being so alarmed. 

Though the place is excellent for composition, the children keep 
me so intent upon their perilous pranks that I have no leisure for 
sketching. And so I sit and see the sun roll down behind Ajusca, 
the highest of the western hills, and behold the reflex glory on the 
white brows of the two south-eastern volcanoes, with their terrible 
names, flushed with the opposing sun, as the brow of death glows 
with the light from the sun beyond the vail. 

The sun gone, the glory is gone ; no twilight lingers here, as win- 
some as a morning nap. Abrupt beginnings and abrupt endings 
are characteristics of clime and people, with very gay and gracious 
interludes. The air grows chill as the sky grows dark, and the 
children and I climb the chancel roof, peep into the dome, and 
down into the church ; that is, I do ; they are too timid or too well 



SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. gg 

trained. All is dark and silent save the ghastly pictures on the 
roof of the dome, which are silent but not dark. We slide down 
the smooth sides of that chancel roof, scamper along on the broad- 
backed ridge of the nave ; that is, they do, not I ; alas ! for this 
proof of a vanished childhood, and get ourselves upon our own 
roof, which is attached to that of the hotel, and into our own rooms. 
Our bird's-eye view, though viewed like all such views of real birds, 
stays, like theirs, undescribed. 

The easel is set up again at the same spot. It is morning now. 
The sun is up these two hours, and pours a strong flood of warmth 
and light on this page. The noise of the street carts comes muf- 
fled up to this house-top. The morning trumpet-clang and drum- 
beat of the soldiers mingle with them, and rise above them, clear 
and steady, a sign that this government is more military yet than 
civil. Frequent bells put in their heavy musical notes, some- 
times rapid ; there is one now striking the half-seconds, sometimes 
slower, but all alike calling a heedless city to an almost voiceless 
service. 

The birds send up their pretty chatterings among the bells, the 
trumpets, and the rattling carts, those true babes in the wood, and 
babes in nature, whose very songs are the laugh of childhood thread- 
ing the graver tones of maturer nature. How deliciously their 
treble laugh breaks on the ear ! Do you not wish you could hear 
them, poor ice-bound citizens of the Arctic North ? 

This is a royal place to see this royal city. Never had a town 
such grand environment. Athens has mountains and sea, but 
scanty plains. Rome, plains, but no water, and low-browed hills. 
Jerusalem, mountains, but no plains nor sea. Modern cities are 
without the least trace of scenic loveliness. London, Paris, New 
York, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, and Berlin, how cheap 
their panorama! It is a map and not a picture that one draws 
when he paints these capitals. Boston and Baltimore make a slight 
approach to hill effects, but only a hundred feet high are their 
mountains, and no plains to set off even these. 

Look here ; turn your eye (and body too, or you will leave your 



lOO OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

head on this slippery roof-side), and take in this scene. Every- 
where a green valley, everywhere dahlia hills — the true dahlia — 
that deep purple sliding into black, and yet never losing its royal 
bloom, the finest color of all for the garments of men and women, 
as well as for Greek and Aztec mountains. 

I am now looking southward ; so may you. The city lies all 
about us, its limits being equidistant in all directions. Its flat roofs 
extend for a mile, domed twice or thrice with spacious churches. 
Then comes a flat gray field for several miles : it is probably more 
than ten miles, but distances are as deceitful as is every thing else 
in this clime. It is sprinkled with trees, especially to the west, and 
at its farther termination. To its right, or westward, the trees grow 
denser, and evidently line thoroughfares and fill gardens. A vil- 
lage glistens under the hills in which it is ending. Then comes a 
mass of dark and rugged peaks, soft in their ruggedness, and light 
in their darkness, the fields creeping well up their sides, and some- 
times, but rarely, climbing* on and over their heads. 

This southern route was the one chosen by Cortez and Scott for 
entering the town. Between the two snow volcanoes they caine 
over a lofty pass, around the western edge of that broad, flash- 
ing lake, by the side of the canal that you see stretching out, 
lined with trees and floating gardens. Along well-built causeways, 
amidst a frightened mass of living people, the invaders marched. 
Cortez had more than one bloody fight on that passway ; and Scott 
made a rough lava height and Cherubusco, a not wide plain, famous 
with his victories. There, too, you note a purple hill, two hundred 
feet high, where the Aztec priests kindled the sacred fire at the 
close of each half century. They thought the world had come to 
an end.. Light was never to come again ; everywhere it was ex- 
tinguished. The people march in solemn procession from the city 
to this hill; the priests take the chosen human victim to its sum- 
mit. His heart is extracted. A new flame is kindled upon it. 
It is transmitted to waiting torches, and sent through the v/hole na- 
tion, re-illumining the face of society, and keeping fresh the hope 
and heart of man. One can hardly fancy that low and silent and 



CHAPULTEPEC. 



lOl 



shrubless peak to have been so long the scene of such a sad and 
memorable festival. 

Keep your eye and head moving westward, and you see the same 
city, landscape beyond, and tall hills in the rear. Almost due west 
lies Chapultepec, the favorite haunt of the rulers of this people from 




CHAPULTEPEC. 

Montezuma to Juarez, a superb park, palace, and picture. It is a 
fortress and a garden, a sort of Windsor Castle set down with its 
hill-top, forests, and views, three miles from London town. It de- 
serves a visit and a page of its own, and so we now swing round 
the circle, leaving its yellow walls, a little haughty in their frowning 
at our presumption to come and go without more obeisance. 

On getting round toward the north, the girdle of nearer hills 
dips down, giving glimpses of mountains beyond. The level lands 
stretch out farther, fifteen and twenty miles, before the passes are 



I02 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

touched. The country is full of trees, which are also full of green- 
ness. Church towers peer above their tops, and white and drab 
specks appear among the interstices, the proofs that this wide area 
has villages amidst its verdure. 

To the right still, the landscape narrows to its closest limits, and 
the sierra of Guadalupe comes within three or four miles of the 
town. It is a range fifteen or twenty miles long, that casts its near- 
est and highest battlements over against the city. It is woodless, 
bright, of purple bloom, without a shady retreat, save such as re- 
cesses may give. 

At its easternmost edge, just where it di'ops into the plains near- 
est the city, you notice several domes and towers massed together. 
That is the group of temples dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, 
the most famous, popular, and powerful of all the virgins of Amer- 
ica, if not of the Church that worships her. That spot is a curi- 
ous evidence of the manner in which Romanism adapts itself to 
the people it governs. The Indians were sullen and unsubdued 
after Cortez had conquered their nation. They were a dangerous 
element, being, like the subjects of the East India Company, a thou- 
sand to one more numerous than their rulers. How shall they be 
subdued ? Their priests and worship were gone, but not their faith 
in both. 

They had a seat of worship in this spot. An Indian coming 
over the mountains, seeking for a priest at a church built by Cor- 
tez, a mile or so from its base, is met by the Virgin, who tells him 
to build a church to her in that spot. He flees affrighted to the 
priest, and tells his tale. It is not idle words to not empty ears, 
though it is so assumed. He is repulsed by the priest, meets her 
twice again, asks a sign, has his soiled blanket filled by her hands 
with flowers from these barren and burning rocks, which when 
poured out at the feet of the incredulous archbishop are no more 

flowers, but 

" A fair maiden clothed with celestial grace," 

even the maiden mother herself. Her flowers had changed to a 
flowery Madonna, with a bud of a boy in her arms, as on a branch. 



THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE. . 103 

If you doubt this they will show you the greasy blanket with her 
form upon it, over the high altar at Guadalupe, in a frame of solid 
silver, located just where she spread it, and she filled it with her- 
self. 

I agreed to accept the miracle if they would show the flowers as 
fresh to-day as when they were picked. This they could also do ; 
for flowers abound in this latitude, and beautiful enough to turn 
any dirty blanket into a Madonna. 

That miracle settled the case for the Indians. They had a se- 
nora of their own. ■ Our Lady of the Remedies was a Spanish moth- 
er. This was an Indian. It was a success. The Virgin of Guada- 
lupe became the goddess of Mexico. Divine honors were paid to 
her. Temples went up everywhere, and shrines in every temple. 
Her picture on its blanket hangs in every house and hut, above the 
counter of the merchant and the bar of pulqui dram-shops, over 
the forge and over the bed, here, there, everywhere. Books by the 
thousand and sermons by the tens of thousands have been written 
and preached upon her virtues and her powers. In one of the 
books in the library of Vera Cruz she is gravely said to have "got 
around God." Undoubtedly she got around this people, and effect- 
ually took them in, or those personating her did ; for the blessed 
Virgin is in Paradise, and has no connection with this idolatry. 

The upper of these three churches, where she first appeared, is 
reckoned the most sacred. Here are the tombs of the chiefest 
dignitaries of church and state. The ascent is lined with trophies 
of her ability to save ; one a solid mast and sail of stone, erected 
by a worshiper whose life was saved from shipwreck, as he be- 
lieved, through her interposition. 

The next is near the foot of the hill, and incloses a chalybeate 
fountain, which burst forth when she lit there on her foot. " The 
iron entered her sole," irreverently remarked an American sinner 
as he gazed upon the fountain. A blaze of gilding covers the' 
chapel connected with this beautiful legend of the fountain. Its 
walls are 

"Thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." 



I04 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




THE LOTTERY TICKET. 



Raffle one thousand fojir hundred and seventy-six. 



RAFFLE 1476 IN BEHALF OF THE SANCTUARY OF OUR 
LADY' OF GUADALUPE. 



Eighth of a ticket for the Raffle one thousand four hundred and seventy- 
six, which is to be celebrated in Mexico the fifteenth day of December, one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-five. 
ggi,ooo. Oct. 7. 



One thousand eight hundred and sixty-five. 



* "The Sanctuary of our Lady" would be better translated freely "The Church of the Blessed 

Virgin." 



POPULAR ORGIES DYING OUT. 105 

The largest church, where her blanket portrait hangs, is a few 
rods farther out on the plain. There is the chief outlay of gold 
and silver and precious stones. Two solid silver railings with 
silver banisters lead from the altar to the choir, a hundred feet 
at least. On its wall is an inscription to her as the Mother of 
God, Foundress and Savior of the Mexican People. 

But the priests of the Virgin have an eye to the main chance. 
They turn her into lottery speculations, and make her useful to 
their often infirmities. At the door-way an old servant of the tem- 
ple sold her pictures, beads, and other ecclesiastical knickknacks. 
A picture that I bought of her was wrapped up in a lottery ticket 
like that shown on the opposite page, with its translation. 

This lottery of the Virgin is one of the most flourishing. The 
monthly drawings draw daily pennies to their purse. It makes 
the priestly pot boil. Time was when luxuries were theirs ; but 
these are hard times now for priests, and so they have to thus turn 
an honest penny to a dishonest use. 

But these popular orgies are fading out. True, each December 
witnesses multitudes from over all the land attending her annual 
festival. The Indian honors it with the dances of the ancient 
times. The rites are more Aztec than papal. Yet the Jesuit be- 
gins to say that faith in the Virgin of Guadalupe is not essential to 
salvation. The Bible will replace the Jesuit, and the trick by 
which he has held their souls captive these three centuries and a 
half will cease to possess them more. Christ the Liberator is com- 
ing. He is nigh — even at their doors. This old blanket, like that 
of Bartimeus, will be thrown away, and the people will come to 
Jesus and be healed. 

Let us leave our Lady of Guadalupe, if you can, with all this 
shrewd but shallow faith and policy, and look more easterly. Here 
lies the vision that charmed the Toltec twelve centuries ago, the 
Aztec eight centuries ago, the Spaniard three centuries ago, and 
the French, Austrian, and American conquerors of our own day. 
From my post it spreads out into a plain that loses itself in a sun- 
mist forty miles away. Across the plain threads of water stretch 
themselves, sometimes spreading into bayous, or lakes. 



100 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




IZTACCIHUATL. 



The lake and lev- 
el end in a ridge 
that rises from the 
surface as modest 
as the tiniest slope, 
but grows and 
grows, not fast, but 
steadily, like a true 
fame, into a sharp, 
brown ^Cig&, well 
lifted up, slides 
down a little on its 
continual ridge, and 
then rises again, still 
not sharp nor sud- 



A VIEW OF THE TWO PEAKS. ■ 107 

den, nor seemingly very high, but into a ragged rim covered 
with snow. You are surprised to find so low a horizon cov- 
ered with perpetual ice. Yet there it lies, not so low after all. 
It is ten thousand feet above this seat, and nearly eighteen 
thousand above the gulf, that reclining Lady of the Skies, who re- 
joices in the unpronounceable name of Iztaccihuatl. I have heard 
all sorts of people seek to speak this word, and never heard two 
agree. So call it as it looks, or call it Big I, which it undoubtedly 
is. You see her head, neck, chest, robes, and feet, white-slippered, 
"with the toes turned up at the daisies" of the stars, with a long 
trail sweeping beyond, as becomes this White Woman, which that 
hard name means. 

The southern side of this snow range drops off to a sharp and 
snowless ridge, where the pass lies over which Scott and Cortez 
marched. Narrow as it looks, it is probably several miles before that 
valley is crossed and the magnificent dome and peak of Popocate- 
petl rounds itself up into a superb cone of lustrous ice. Down it 
glides on the farther side into those brown rims on which we first 
gazed, and thus sails round the circle of this view. These snow- 
peaks are thus a not extravagant part of the landscape. They do 
not stretch suddenly and extraordinarily above their fellows. They 
are primi inter pares. A fall of rain here at this season will make 
all this high ridge snow. It was so last week, but the snow was 
gone ere noon, except from the two head centres. The king and 
queen reign (or snow) perpetuall3^ 

The torrid sun, it would seem, ought to burn off their mantle. 
You can not sit in it now half an hour. It burns on the knees 
like a burning-glass. I must retreat to the shadow of a tall stone 
bass-relief lifted up at the front of the roof, and at the foot of a 
headless statue, once a Magdalene, I judge, conclude this portrait. 

It shows how high they are, and how distant also, not less than 
sixty miles away, if you notice that range of cliffs that lies between 
them and us. They, too, are well lifted up, and they crouch as lions 
at the base of these mightypowers. 

See the volcanic origin also. The craters are visible of these 



io8 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 





THE DOME. 

lower hills. Some look just like a bowl upside clown, with its bot- 
tom cut ofif — a round hollow. 

You have seen the valley of Mexico. On that north-eastern, 
edge of the snow range, a few feet above the lake, you remember, | 
Cortez stood and viewed the landscape over, and said, " I must 
subdue this exquisite region for our Lady and her Christ." What 



ANOTHER BATTLE. 1 09 

a job he undertook he hardly then dreamed. How much labor 
and loss of life, fightings without and fears within, before he rode a 
conqueror through these streets, which he had made without inhab- 
itant, and almost without a dwelling-place. Inch by inch he level- 
ed off the Aztec city. Two years and over he plotted and fought, 
and fought and plotted, ere the prize was his. 

The bloodless battle now being fought for the recovery of this 
same land to Christ, how long will that take ? How many will fall ? 
Not so bloodless, perhaps, after all. A more cunning enemy than 
Montezuma, a more daring one than Guatemozin is to be subdued. 
He may kill many ere he himself is slain. But conquer Christ will. 
This earth in all its beauty is His. These people in all their lowli- 
ness ai"e His. The Church He has saved with His most precious 
blood must come hither bearing the true cross of personal holiness, 
and by patient continuance in well-doing bring up this population 
to the level of Christian probity, piety, and peace. 

It is a grander work than any ever before devised. It is worthy 
of the Church and its Divine Head. Let it be steadily prosecuted. 
Match Cortez in his patience, perseverance, persistence, and it will 
be done. 

The sun grows hot and hotter. The shelter of the bass-relief is 
gone. A deep recess below gives a stone seat in the corner, just 
fitted for shade and air. The breezes of Popocatepetl glide cool- 
ingly over the leaf and the writer. You have seen Mexico from 
the house-top ; let us take a new page, and show you Mexico from 
the sidewalk. . 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



III. 

FROM THE SIDEWALK. 

Views from Street Corners. — Chief Street. — Shops, Plaza, Cathedral. — High 
and Low Religion. — Aztec Calendar Stone. — The Sacrificial Stone. — The 
President's private House. — Hotel Iturbide. — Private Residences. — Alameda. 

The dizzy church top from which we swung round the circle of 
the town is not half as agreeable as this sturdy and simple pave- 
ment at its foot. After all, there is nothing like the solid earth 
under your feet. Even this not too solid earth is better than all 
airy spirits and domes and azateas. Not too solid, because you 
remember Mexico is located on a dry, salt marsh, which was a salt 
lake when Cortez conquered it, and which is yet a lake a few 
inches below the surface, and often, in its sewers and odors, upon 
the surface also. 

These odors sometimes surpass those of Cologne, but, unlike 
those of that fragrant town, are not especially pestilential. The 
high altitudes preserve it from this peril. Nor is it altogether 
blamable for this defect. Drainage is hardly possible. The flat 
plain surrounded by high mountains prevents any sufficient descent 
for sewerage. When the street is opened for such purposes, you 
see the moist mud not two feet below the pavement. Efforts are 
being made, or rather being talked about, for opening channels to 
the Tulu River, some forty miles to the west, and thereby getting 
up a movement of this sort from the centre. But it is not likely 
soon to be. 

Turning away our eyes, if we can not turn up our noses, from 
this offense, which is not very offensive on the chief thoroughfares, 
let us note the map and the traits of the town. 

The first peculiarity you will observe is the romantic outlook al- 
most every street corner affords. You look straight through the 



BEAUTY OF LOCATION. 113 

city, and bound your vision by the purple mountains, whichever 
direction you gaze. Take any corner where the streets pass clear 
through the town, you see, north, south, east, and west, or as near 
that as the lines run, the all-embracing mountains. They are 
from three to .thirty miles distant, some even sixty miles, and yet 
they look as if only just down to the farther end of this telescopic 
tube of a street. They rise from two to ten thousand feet, and so 
are never diminutive, often very magnificent. 

No city I have ever seen has any equal cincture. Athens ap- 
proaches it. Her chief streets look out on Pentelicus and Hymet- 
tus ; but she is not level herself, and so can not get up these vis- 
tas ; nor is she large, and does not, therefore, match her mount- 
ains. They overpower her, not she them. Mexico is equal to her 
grander mountains. Popocatepetl is not ashamed to call her sis- 
ter, nor is she unworthy of such a companionship. Athens historic- 
ally overtops all its peaks. Mexico in its present proportions well 
fits her magnificent frame. One never tires of this resting-place 
for the eye. It is so exquisite in calm and color, that it seems as 
if made on purpose for exhibition and exhilaration. 

This fact, too, seems to put the city in your grasp at the start. 
Most towns of this size you find it somewhat difficult to master. 
They are so tossed up and down, or stretched out, or have no per- 
ceptible limits, that one is a long time in getting hold of them. 
Though a dweller in Chicago for a month, it still bewilders me to 
arrange the streets of its west and south sides. Its north side I 
never attempted to subdue. I left that for the fire. Boston, ev- 
ery body says, except its own people, is untamable. Even the fire 
got tired of running round and round its narrow and crooked 
thoroughfares, and gave up in despair, especially when it drew near 
its narrowest and crookedest portion. Philadelphia's perfect rect- 
angularity is equally bewildering, while Washington makes the 
head swim, no less in its everlasting radiations than its political 
plannings. As for New York, Brooklyn, London, and such like vil- 
lages, they are all under the same ban as their superior sisters. 

The real reason of this is, they have no perceptible boundaries ; 



114 ^^^ NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

nothing to which they can be adjusted. Cincinnati, held in a 
pocket of hills, is much more easily grasped than Chicago, on a | 
walless prairie. Jerusalem is seen at a glance, despite its crooked 
and narrow alleys, for it is on a hill-top, with higher hills inclosing 
it. But Mexico is pre-eminent in this respect. You know the town 
at a glance. There are large portions of it I have not visited, yet 
I have seemed to see it all at any corner. There it lies, each four 
of the ways straight to the mountains. 

It is not crooked. Every thoroughfare is straight, and the blocks 
regular. William Penn in 1680 did not surpass Hernando Cortez 
in 1522. Unlike his ever-stretching, never-girdled town, this city 
has its natural metres and bounds' that put the whole under the 
eye at once. It is like the observation of a witty judge to a broth- \ 
er lawyer on Hempstead Plains. When urged to stop longer, and 
see the country more thoroughly, after a brief ride, he stood up 1 
in the buggy, turned himself slowly round, and said, " I have seen 
it. Drive on." So at this corner where the Church of the Profesa 
stands, you have only to look in four directions, and can say, " I've 
seen Mexico. Drive on." But if the general appearance is the 
same, the special and nearer views are varied, novel, and attractive. 

Take the spot at the base of our church -tower of the Profesa. 
It is simply a corner in a city street. The names of the streets are 
devotional enough to make us pause ; for here come together the 
Street of the Holy Spirit and the Street of St. Joseph, the Royal. 
You can see north to the Guadalupe range, west to Tacubaya, south 
to Ajusca (called Ahusca), a tall, dark, purple range, and east to 
the giant peaks of snow. The mountains are indeed round about 
Mexico as about no other capital, while the town lies as level at ' 
their bases as Chicago by its lake. 

The Aztec priest, himself probably a prince and warrior, an- 
nounced by divination that where they should see an eagle on a ' 
cactus, holding a serpent in his beak, there their city should be ■ 
planted — located rather, for it would be difficult to plant a city on 
the sea. Such a sight was asserted to be seen at the southern end 
of Lake Tezcuco. The city was placed there for military protec- 



SAJV COSME AVENUE. 115 

tion, whatever were the divinations of the priests ; for, being on 
the water, it was not easily assailable. They took the eagle with 
the serpent and cactus for their national symbol, and the conquer- 
ors accepted that national coat of arms from their subjects. Some 
irreverent Yankees assert that a more appropriate symbol would 
be a Greaser sitting on a jackass drinking pulqui. But so they 
could retort that our symbol could better be a whisky-jug and a 
turkey than our like chosen eagle. 

The city thus laid out has since had the water dry up from be- 
neath it sufficiently to give it solid streets. The water of the lake 
was in it, in canals, and close to it, in its own shallow waves, when 
Cortez captured it. To-day it is two or three miles from its outer 
most eastern gate. While the streets are straight, but few are 
noticeable, and only two or three are really attractive. The chief 
thoroughfare from the depot to the plaza and its two nearest par- 
allel streets are the main avenues of the city. 

The San Cosme Avenue starts out from the station very broad, 
but it narrows as it passes the Alameda, and enters the thick of the 
town, where it terminates at the eastern end of the Grand Plaza. 
This is the very street over which Cortez made his famous escape 
from the infuriated town, rendered doubly mad by the interference 
of his lieutenant, Alvarado, in his absence, with the bloody rites of 
human sacrifice. The town woke up before they were well started, 
roused by a sentinel, chased them along this dike, which is all this 
then was, crossed with rude and frequent ditches, and inclosed 
on either side with water. The multitudes dragged them off the 
narrow causeways, caught them as they tried to clear the chasms, 
their pontoon train being pressed into the mud of the first broad 
ditch, so that it could not be taken up. The band of adventurers 
lost their arms, ammunition, horses, precious metals, and gems, and 
all but a score of their men were left along the ravine, a prey to 
the destroyer. They assembled a few miles up, under the cypress- 
tree still standing, and a few days later, with their good swords and 
strong hearts cut their way through two hundred thousand men, 
swinging down upon them from the Sierra of Gaudalupe, in the 



Il6 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

plains at Otumba. The avenue is now solid, and Alvarado's famous 
leap across one of these ditches is an undistinguishable bit of the 
hard highway. Over the same road marched the American army 
into town, Scott and Grant and Lee, the known, and the then un- 
known, being in the little host of later conquerors. If we are seek- 
ing a like and larger, bloodless and better, conquest, we can proper- 
ly pass to our quarters over the same path. It may be ominous of 
a bloody retreat under the uprisings and assaults of reigning super- 
stition, but it will only thus be prophetic of ultimate and perfect 
victory. 

A parallel street to the central thoroughfare goes out from 
the western end of the same plaza, and is heavily shaded at the 
start with covered arcades, like a deep sombrero, behind which 
shop-men of all sorts ply their trades. It runs straight to the lux- 
urious northern hamlet of Tacubaya. Between these two is the 
street at whose corner you have been standing. It lies between 
the green plats of the Plaza and the Alameda, each of which ap- 
pears at either extremity. This street is the busiest and most fash- 
ionable of all in the town. It is half a mile long, forty to fifty feet 
wide, about three stories high, faced with stone or mortar, but, ex- 
cept three or four buildings, without especial ornament. It bears 
the names of Calle del Plateros (or Street of the Silversmiths), 
Calle de Profesa, and Calle de San Francisco. It is, however, one 
in every respect but its name. They have a way here of giving 
almost every block a name of its own, which in a long street is as 
perplexing as the multitude of names given to a royal heir would 
be if he were called by a different one of them every day. 

This street is lively with hackney and private coaches ; carts 
with three mules abreast ; burros, or donkeys, with their immense 
burdens ; and men and women with theirs almost equally heavy, 
the women with rebosas, or blue or brown fine-wove mantles, wrap- 
ped about their shoulders, and half hiding the faces ; the men with 
their white blankets with bright-colored borders, or with only, their 
dirty white shirts and trowsers, carrying heavy loads on their 
trained shoulders. 



SHOPPING AND STORES. 



117 




SAN COSME AQUEDUCT, CITY OF MEXICO. 



Fashion also 
flows up and down 
the streets, on side- 
walks, and in car- 
riages. The high- 
est fashion is never to appear on the sidewalk, not even to shop ; 
but the grand lady, sitting in her carriage, has the goods put in 
her lap, and daintily indulges her feminine passion. 

Come up to the plaza, the old centre of the city. It is only a 
few rods — an eighth of a mile, perhaps. You pass a few dry-goods 
stores, two or three, in this chiefest resort of the ladies and the 
trade ; many jewelry stores, into which the former silversmiths that 
gave their name to the street have changed ; tobacconists, who 
have only smoking- tobacco, the chewing variety being here un- 
known. Their cigarettes are done up in paper of different colors, 
and so packed as to make the shop look tasteful as its Parisian 



Il8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

rival. Shoe stores abound, containing very pretty gaiters, and al- 
most the only cheap article in the city. 

Two or three of the old silversmith establishments remain, holes 
in the wall, where a few manufactured articles of silver, very neat 
and cheap, are hung up on the sides of the wall above the little 
old counter, and sometimes a tiny forge is plying its fires at the 
rear. 

The plaza is hardly less than a thousand feet square. In its 
centre is a large garden, planted by Carlotta, and well filled with 
trees and flowers, in full leaf and bloom. On the west and south 
sides are deep arcades, filled with all manner of knickknacks of 
much show and little profit. 

The Government Palace extends along the entire eastern side, 
a stately but not superb edifice. In its ample courts large num- 
bers of the soldiery are stationed, and even a great quantity of 
ammunition is stored. The hall of ambassadors is the chief room, 
stretching along nearly all this front, and adorned with portraits of 
the leading generals and presidents of the republic, among whom 
place is found for Washington and Bolivar alone, of other nations. 
We have no such hall in Washington, though the East Room in 
its height and breadth is of yet greater grandeur. 

The north or chief side is occupied with the cathedral. This 
immense structure is approached by a very broad esplanade of its 
own, and is of large and even grand proportions, though its towers 
are not especially effective. It stands on a plateau, raised several 
feet from the pavement of the plaza, has adjoining it the sagrario, 
or parish church, profusely carved without and gilded within, the 
carving cheap and the gilding faded. It is cut up to fit divers 
crowds. The altar by the chief entrance is usually thronged. The 
choir behind it is a stately mass of carving. Two beautiful balus- 
trades, of an amalgam of gold, silver, and brass, connect the choir 
and the high altar. So rich are they that an Englishman offered to 
replace them with silver, and was refused. Beautiful figures of like 
precious metal hold candelabra along this walk. The dome is of 
impressive proportions, and the high altar is set off with polished 



TRADING ON THE SABBATH. 



119 



alabaster, and profusion of pink and green images, while the altar 
behind it is one blaze of gilding, from floor to ceiling, with a 
multitude of gilded images in niches along its broad and shin- 
ing face. 




The area in front of the cathedral is full of people selling their 
wares — never so full as on Sabbath mornings. Here is the lottery- 
ticket vender, most numerous and most busy of all. Male and 
female has this church created them, chiefly old people. All their 
sales have a percentage of benefit for the priest. The sellers are 



I20 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

each numbered, and the church keeps steady watch over this im- 
portant revenue. 

Here is a velocipede course, and children enjoy it. The match- 
boy, pert and pretty; the cigar-boy; the ice-cream vender of a very 
poor cream, as I knew by a week evening's trial ; the print-seller — 
every trade that can, is disposing of its wares before this sacred 
portal. How much is a whip of small cords needed here and now 
for those who make this house a house of merchandise ! But mer- 
chandise of souls goes on within. Shall not that of lesser wares 
consistently proceed without ? 

I saw high mass performed here two weeks ago in the presence 
of the archbishop, the most elaborate and ornate religious display 
I ever saw. I hardly think Rome herself equals this grandilo- 
quence of dress and posture. A throne was set on the side of the 
altar, and the archbishop, in costly gold and silver vestments, was 
installed under the crimson velvet pall, whose only defect seemed 
to be a piece of unpainted frame with white wooden pulle3's, by 
which the top of the velvet back was let out over the head a 
yard or more as a roof. It was evidently made so that this 
projection could be hauled up to a line with the back, when it 
was to be carried to the sacristy, or depository, of the sacred gar- 
ments. 

On either side of this king of priests were many pompously ar- 
rayed vassals. Before him were three officiating ministers in like 
gaudy apparel. On the archbishop's head was a tall, ornate, gilded 
mitre, which he changed for a less gilded pasteboard in the more 
penitential portions of the ceremony. A dozen boys, in black and 
white, swung incense and held candles. One of them was the 
keeper of his grace's handkerchief, which he once called for by 
touching his nose. It was handed him, a dingy brown and red silk 
bandana, clean and folded, however. He took, opened, used, re- 
folded, and returned, and the service went on. I am surprised so 
fine a gentleman does not use a white linen handkerchief, or one 
with a gold border. Is that en rcg/e? I saw an officiator at the 
Madelaine in Paris blow his nose upon a like huge and dirty-col- 



THE ARCHBISHOP AT HIGH MASS. 12 1 

ored silk. It jarred badly with his golden robes. So did this 
with these. 

Do you wish to know how the archbishop looks ? He is from 
fifty to fifty-two, short, thick-set, full-fleshed, full-faced ; has a strong, 
loud voice, a bland and meaningless smile, a polished and easy 
manner, and is evidently trained in the art of government. He 
preaches every Sunday morning to a large audience in the sagrario, 
who sit or kneel upon the floor. He is not an orator after the im- 
passioned sort, but, like most high officials, is evidently a manager 
rather than a talker. The interests of his Church will not suffer in 
his hands, so far as policy and push can favor them. He seems 
also very devout in the mass, and goes through that ceremony as 
though he believed it, which most do not. 

A small image, set in a golden base, was carried round the 
church by four blue cotton-robed peons, the image, I believe, of.St. 
Philip, as it was his day ; and the choir followed singing, and the 
clergy, and a crowd of irreverent gazers and worshipers treading 
almost on the sacred robes and their more sacred wearers. The 
crowd was very ill-dressed and ill-mannered ; and as for religion — 
well, the stream can not rise higher than the fountain. Poor Philip 
did differently with the eunuch than these his worshipers when he 
ran along by his chariot, and preached atonement and salvation 
by simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, if that able and ac- 
complished gentleman who is t*he head centre of this display could 
only get out of this pomp into that simplicity of faith, how different 
would this worship be ! 

The singing was magnificent, as far as elaborateness goes. After 
the pomp had finished, they disrobed the archbishop, in the pres- 
ence of the congregation, of about half a dozen garments, and 
put on him a scarlet robe. It was all grandly done ; but to what 
intent? Those poor crowds of half-dressed spectators, what did 
they learn by this display ? Ah ! Christ, Thou art needed in this 
temple, to teach Thy professed ministers how to feed Thy famish- 
ing flock. Hasten Thy coming ! He has come ! 

Let us get out of this holy smoke, and odor and blaze and glare 



122 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

and tinsel, and the nasty, ragged crowd of spectators, and take to 
the street again. You notice, as you leave the church, a round 
slab at its northern corner. That is the Calendar Stone of the 
Aztecs. It was saved from the ruins of the teocallis that stood 
here. It is a specimen of the learning and art of those people, and 
shows that but for their religion they might have longer held sway. 
Their present religion, poor as it is, replaced a poorer. This ca- 
thedral, grand as it is, is not too grand to occupy its seat. It is 
of the Lord. 




THE AZTEC CALENDAR STONE. 



Turn from the cathedral southward, enter the street opposite 
that by which you entered the plaza, pass by the President's palace 
and the post-office, and you come to a museum of antiquities. In 
the centre of its court lies a huge, round, red granite stone, twelve 
feet in diameter, four feet high. This stone is covered with amor- 



THE STREET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 1 23 

phous figures, and is deep stained as if with blood. Where the 
cathedral stands, a teocallis stood — five terraces, and two hun- 
dred feet high. By a fivefold series of stairs in one corner, and 
fivefold circuit of the mound, the teocallis was mounted. On its 
top was this stone. Around the sides of the teocallis and up its 
steps they led their victims — men and youth by the thousands — 
made them pause before this stone, stretched their chests over it, 
so that the heart was strained over its edge, cut the flesh over the 
heart opening to it, plucked the heart forth, laid it reverently be- 
fore the god, and hurled the body down the sides of the teocallis 
to the multitude below, who took it up carefully, cooked it, and ate 
it as a religious banquet. The cathedral is better than the teocallis, 
and the genuflexions and millinery of priests and bishops than the 
sacrifice of bloody hearts and the sacrament of cannibalism. 

Turn northward again. We pass up the street of San Francisco, 
by the modest house of President Lerdo, a two -story city front, 
with green blinds, without pretense or cost ; past the Hotel Iturbide, 
once that emperor's palace, now the Hotel Diligencias, the costliest 
edifice on the street ; past the chapel of San Francisco and the 
pile of buildings which made that famous convent. Nearly op- 
posite the chapel and its gardens are the residences of the two 
wealthiest Mexicans, Barron and Escandron. The brother of the 
latter once gave his check for seven millions of dollars. He began 
his fortune by establishing a stage-coach system all over this coun- 
try. Mines, railroads, and other operations keep it growing. Their 
residences are plain without, except the latter's new house, which 
essays pillars and bronze dogs and lions on its roof Within they 
are sumptuous. Courts, flowers, long suites of long parlors, every 
thing the heart craves is there, except that which it craves pre- 
eminently — the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Between their 
houses is an old structure, faced with porcelain, blue -and -white 
blocks, four inches square, of various figures. Within is a court 
with carved pillars. It is a very fanciful structure, and originally 
cost much. Across the way from these dignities, in pleasant apart- 
ments, is the residence of the American consul general. Dr. Julius 



124 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



A. Skilton, who won large repute for courage and skill in our war, 
and none the less for his sagacity and courage as a reporter of 
the New York Herald during the close of the French occupation. 
Whoever comes to Mexico will be sure of a handsome welcome 
in this American home. 




INTERIOR OF A MODERN MEXICAN HOUSE. 

A Mexican house is all beautiful within, if anywhere. It is not 
so, certainly, without. You enter through a large high door, wide 
enough to admit your carriage, into a patio, or open paved court. 
Around this are rooms for servants and horses, on the first floor. 
Handsome stairs lead to the upper stories, light balconies run 
around them, and rooms open into them. They are not allowed to 
open on neighboring estates, so they must open on court or street. 
The last commands usually only one of the four sides ; so most 
houses have three-fourths of their light from the court. 



THE ALAMEDA. . 125 

These rooms are as cool and airy as those built after our fashion, 
though they usually have only one inlet for air and light. They are 
much higher in ceiling than ours, and are tastefully set off in fres- 
coes. The balustrades are often of brass, and the work has a more 
finished look, even in common houses, than the best in the States 
exhibit. On the street side are small balconies for sight-seeing. 
There are more disagreeable dwellings by far than a first-class 
Mexican house. 

A few rods farther north and we reach the city park, called Ala- 
meda.. It is a pretty shaded inclosure of about forty acres, lying 
between the two thoroughfares of the San Francisco and the San 
Cosme. Its trees are large, thick together, and perpetually green. 
The leaf hardly" falls before the young one presses itself to take its 
aged place, so that even the deciduous sort never get reduced to a 
Northern nakedness. Their new spring robes, like a snake's, an 
eagle's, and an Easter belle's, are assumed or ere their old ones are 
dropped. 

These trees are interspersed with open plats, where flowers of 
every size and sort gladden the nerves of sight and smell. These 
are again interspersed with fountains, and circular centres lined 
with stone benches, and open, hard parterres for children and 
bands to play. The trees and flowers are shut off from approach 
by high fences ; the circles about the fountains and graveled 
squares are alone accessible. 

This park needs only one addition to make it a perpetual delight 
— safety. One can not walk there in midday without peril. Al- 
most every day robberies occur. A gentleman walking with his 
wife saw another man being robbed, and declined to interfere, 
though he had a revolver, on the ground that it might alarm his 
wife. 

We may rest here from our sidewalk studies, if we are tired, and 
it is not too dark, and talk on what this city needs to make it as 
safe as it is lovely. 



126 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



> 



IV. 

A NEW E VENT IN MEXICO. 

Palace of the President. — The President. — How he looks. — What he pledges. — 
Former Property of the Church. — Its Consequences. — Corruption. — Prospects 
and Perils. 

The first official recognition by the head of the Mexican nation 
of any other Church than the Roman CathoHc, which was till within 
a few years the only possible religion, was so frank, cordial, and 
free as to show how complete is the executive and, therefore, po- 
litical and constitutional changes in this important republic. 

At 4 o'clock, Tuesday, Jan. 14th, the American minister, Hon. 
Thomas H. Nelson, accompanied by his secretary, Mr. Bliss, son 
of Rev. Asher Bliss, long missionary among the Seneca Indians, a 
gentleman of remarkable scholarship and hardly less remarkable 
wit, took three Americans into the presence of the President of 
Mexico. One was General Palmer, the Philadelphia representa- 
tive of the Mexican railroad movement ; another was Mr. Parish, 
of Europe, co-operator abroad in these American enterprises ; and 
the third was a Methodist minister, come hither to arrange for the 
planting of the Methodist Episcopal Church in this country. 

The palace occupies a side of the Grand Plaza on which the 
cathedral fronts. Through long and handsome apartments we are 
led to one richly furnished in its hangings, marbles, and paintings, 
chief of which is the portrait of Emperor Iturbide, who more than 
any other man was the Washington of Mexico, and secured her in- 
dependence. 

The President soon enters. A small man, with small, well-shaped 
head and features, hair thin, well-nigh to baldness, with pleasant, 
bland smile, tone, and manner. We are introduced by Mr. Nelson 



INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT. , 127 

in a graceful and dignified form, and the President addresses each 
by turn. On the introduction of the clergyman, he said he had 
often heard of the antecedents of the Church he represented, and 
welcomed him to the supervision of her work in this country. No 
one Church was recognized by the state as of superior claims to 
another. Toleration of all faiths was the law of the land. This 
movement might not be looked upon with favor by bishops here ; 
but the civil power would protect it, if it became necessary, in de- 
fense of its rights and liberties. I thanked him for his offers, but 
said I hoped no such case would arise as would call for the protec- 
tion of the state. We had no hostile relations to other religious 
bodies. Our mission was to build up our work in our own way, by 
education of the people, and by organization of churches of our 
own faith and order. 

He responded yet more at length, re-affirniing his readiness to 
support our churches in any exigencies that might arise in the 
prosecution of our work, so far as they were imperiled by any un- 
lawful opposition. He repeated his welcome to the land, and his 
good wishes for our prosperity. 

This interview means more than the recognition of one Christian 
Church. It is the formal and, to a degree, official announcement of 
the policy of the nation. The President is a scholar and jurist of 
large repute. He had charge in his earlier years of a school in 
this city, and in later years was president of the courts, where the 
question of Church property has been often in consultation. In all 
his public life he has thus met with Church matters. He has been 
affirmed to be in more sympathy with the Church party than Juarez, 
and some of its leaders have dreamed that their former preroga- 
tives were to be restored under his administration. 

This strong and unequivocal affirmation of the law of the realm 
and of his cordial support of its principles, even to the aid of the 
civil power, if need be, shows how impossible it is for any single 
Church government to again possess exclusive jurisdiction here 
and the support of the national arm. 

The Roman Catholic chiefs are recognizing this fact, and are 



128 'OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

said to be favorable to annexation, because they can get yet larger 
liberties under our government than are allowed them here. No 
one is permitted to appear in his official costume in the streets of 
this city. Religious processions are proscribed. The holy wafer 
is carried to dying people no longer in a gilded coach, but in a 
private carriage, the bared head of the driver being the only sign 
by which the faithful can know it, and can fall on their knees on 
its passing by. So great has this irreverence grown, that a native 
gentleman, pointing to the sagrario where this coach is still kept, 
said to me, " They keep in there what they call ' the Holy Ghost 
coach,' but I call it the hell-cart." Could disrespect go further? 

The confiscation of Church property was an enormous loss of 
Church power. It held two-thirds of this city in its possession. 
It held mortgages in as large a portion of the country. Letting 
its money at a low figure and on liberal and long terms, it gradual- 
ly became an enormous savings-bank, and controlled the whole 
landed interest of the country. Its convents covered hundreds of 
acres in the heart of the city, and were adorned in the highest 
degree that art and wealth could devise. Gardens, lakes, parks, 
pillars elegantly wrought in polished marble, churches of splen- 
dor in construction and ornamentation, were the unseen luxurious 
abodes of the world-denying friars and nuns. Corruption of the 
most startling sort abounded ; and money, the sinews of the state, 
was in the hands exclusively of the corrupted and corrupters. 

Good men may have been involved in this arrangement, may 
have presided over it. Good men have been connected with every 
controlling evil that the world has ever seen. An Orthodox Con- 
gregational minister called his burning satire against New En- 
gland's demoralization under rum " Deacon Giles's Distillery," and 
the slave-holding system of English West Indies was supported by 
rectors of the Established Church, and of our own land by ministers 
of all churches in the South. So we are all in condemnation, and 
none can throw stones at the former growth to financial power of 
the Roman Church in Mexico. 

Indeed, it has its eloquent advocates to-day. . A lady of high 



A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER. 1 29 

social position and an ardent Papist, as she proudly calls herself, 
but yesterday was declaring that the former system was far better 
than the present ; that the Church leased its buildings cheaper 
than landlords do now, and was far more merciful to its debtors ; 
that great suffering had followed the overthrow of its moneyed 
power. All of this was undoubtedly true. So we have heard of 
the suffering to the emancipated class in our own land arising 
from their liberation, and not without foundation is that complaint. 

A sudden change in the weather, whether from heat to cold or 
cold to heat, is attended with loss of life to those whose enfeebled 
condition can not bear extremes of any thing. If the " Norther " 
kills every person sick of the yellow fever in the hospitals of Vera 
Cruz, it drives the fever out of the city, and saves the lives of all 
that are well. So the old never changes into the new without 
some sense of loss. But it changes, nevertheless ; and it changes 
for the better. Mexico is far better off under ecclesiastical liberty 
than under ecclesiastical bondage. New England is vastly im- 
proved religiously by the abolition of her State Church, which gov- 
erned her till within a half a century ; as England will be equally 
advanced in morals and religion when her national Church is dis- 
established, and lawn sleeves cease to flutter among the black 
coats of the House of Lords, unless they flutter on the white arms 
of the ladies of the realm. 

So Mexico has sprung up in newness of life through this eman- 
cipation from the fetters of an enforced ecclesiastical system. The 
Roman Catholic Church has yet large control of her people ; and 
will have more, if possible, by the new relation of liberty of choice 
in which she will stand to them and they to her. Other Christian 
Churches are springing up, and all the leading bodies in America 
will be earnestly active. 

The prospects of their success are excellent. The people are 
free in this city and its environs, and are protected in their freedom 
by public sentiment and the civil power. Consequently, the new 
churches are well attended, and priests and subordinate church 
officials are joining them, A doctor of divinity, who was offered 



130 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. » 

a bishopric if he would remain with the Romanists, has left their 
ranks and joined himself to the new movement. • 

In some other cities persecution yet abounds. At Toluca, the 
capital of this State, a riot broke up lately one of these congre- I 
gations, in which three persons were killed. At Peubla, the chief | 
city next to the capital, a preacher was mobbed from the town for , 
daring to speak in the name of Jesus. But these ebullitions will 
grow less, I trust ; and, if they increase, it will be but for a mo- 
ment. Like our Ku-Klux outrages, they are the dying blows of a 
dying evil. They will grow fainter, and then cease. The new or- 
der has arisen on this grand country — the order of religious lib- 
erty. It has followed the advent of civil liberty here, as it fol- 
lowed it in our own country. It will enlarge and uplift this land, * 
as it has our own. 

Honor, then, to President Lerdo for his cheering words ! He I 
will not, we hope, be called to put those into effect which prom- 
ised protection in the courts and by the power of the state. The \ 
leaders of the dominant Church will have to accept the situation, i 
and allow the new forms and forces of the Church of Christ to op- 
erate undisturbed, except by such friendly rivalry as they may see 
fit to put forth. 

Since this event, interviews have been granted other clerg}'men, 
and like assurances been given. The laws of Congress have been 
liberal and right. But persecutions have broken out, and murders 
committed in Puebla and elsewhere. One missionary has fallen. 1 
But no punishment has been meted out to the murderers. Unless ' 
this is done, promises and edicts will be idle words. We trust 
it will be done. If not, should not America protect her own citi- 
zens in these rights as much as she would protect her merchants ' 
trading there ? Toleration is the first word, Protection the second. ■ 
Will the wise Lerdo de Tejada give us both } 



A MEDIEVAL CASTLE. j^i 



V. 

OLD AND NE W AMONG THE STL VER MINES. 

A Mediaeval Castle. — First Icicle.— Omatuska. — More about Pulqui.— A big 
Scare. — A Paradise. — Casa Grande. — A Sabbath in Pachuca. — A native Con- 
vert. — Mediaeval Cavalcade. — The Visitors. — Mounting Real Del Monte. — 
The Castle of Real. — Gentlemanly Assassin. — Silver Factories. — Velasco. — 
A Reduction. — Haciendado Riley. — Mexican Giant's Causeway. — More Sil- 
ver Reduction. — Horsemanship under Difficulties.— Contraries balancing Con- 
traries. — La Barranca Grande. — A bigger Scare. — A Wedding. — Mmer and 
Mining. — The Gautemozin. — The better Investment. 

One need not go to Europe to find one of its best mediaeval 
towns. Let him visit Quebec. So one need not go back to the 
Middle Ages to see a fine specimen of feudal times. Let him 
come to Pachuca. I have been pleased often at the ingenious way 
in which Mr. Hale contrives to get allusions to the Old and New 
in the introductory pages of his magazine. They are by far the 
best part usually of its contributions, and not the worst specimens 
of his own ability. But were he where I am to-night, and had he 
enjoyed what I have these last three days, he would have material 
for a most piquant page of his preamble. I have never seen there 
yet, to my surprise, Lowell's line, 

" Old and new at its birth, like Le Verrier's planet." 

Perhaps it has been quoted. This experience was old and new at 
its birth to those that were privileged to enjoy it. 

The place where I am writing is a castle of the Middle Ages in 
its important features. Its huge. door is kept closed. Beside the 
entrance armed men are constantly to be seen. An iron gate 
within prevents the passage of the enemy if the first door is pene- 
trated. The roof is surrounded with a battlement, pierced with 



132 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



loop-holes and slit with turrets, and crowned with a tower, project- 1 
ing into the sidewalk, and well adjusted to hurl grenades and shoot I 
rifles at assailants below. I 

The open court, into which the entrance instantly leads, is often I 
full of armed men and horses, called to accompany their leader on 
his official excursions. The rattling of spurs on its pavement, and 
clinking of the ornaments of the horsemen and their horses, are I 
familiar sounds. The patio is European and antique ; an ele- 
gant stairway to the upper story begins opposite the entrance ; a 
balcony runs around that story, well faced with exquisite flowers of 
every tropical delight, and rooms open from it, spacious and ele- 
gant. Everywhere wealth and refinement prevail. The luxurious 
air of Mexico is about us, and the old times are yet more around 
us. How did we get here, and why? Thereby hangs a tale. Let. 
the city walks and rides rest a while, as we unfold the panorama 
of this our first excursion into the country. That, as every thing 
else here, is attended with danger. 

" Dangers stand thick through all the ground," 

we have to constantly sing, and not only sing it, but " sense " it, as 
the backwoods thinker strongly puts it. One must look sharp, or 
he will be in the condition of the lepers in Samaria, who were in 
danger of perishing whether they staid in the city or went without 
the walls. There seems to be about an equal danger of being rob- 
bed, kidnaped, and otherwise abused, whether you remain in the 
city or go into the country. 

For instance, right opposite my hotel, a gentleman of a rich fam- 
ily was kidnaped a few months ago, as he was returning from the 
opera at an early hour of the night, not later than ten, and con- 
fined in a room not far from the Grand Plaza for nine days, being 
put in a hole in the ground, and knives so placed that any move- 
ment of his body would thrust them into him. So it is not without 
peril even to remain in the hotel, or, rather, to go to the opera, a |j 
possibility also elsewhere, but of another sort. He was discovered 
by the tell-tale of a woman, who had the sweet revenge of seeing 



Jl 



A TEXT AND A SERMON. 133 

four of her masculine comrades executed in twenty-four hours after 
her revelation. 

But there is no less danger in leaving the city. The country is 
full of robbers. Stage-coaches are rifled on every road. The Gov- 
ernment is powerless to protect life or property. Yet one might as 
well die by the robbers as be scared to death through fear of being 
robbed. " Faint heart never won fair lady," or any thing else. 

" Let us, then, be up and doing, 
With a heart for a7iy fate," 

a great thing to say, if we mean all it includes, though many trip 
over the distich as though it were only pretty poetry. 

Our point objective is Pachuca. You have heard of the silver 
mines of Mexico. Who has not? Curiosity and churchianity led 
our first steps to these treasures. We wanted to see what had 
made Mexico so attractive, and how she could be made more so. 
Miss Kilmansegg would not have been worth much without her 
precious leg, and Mexico would have been let alone as severely as 
the Central African governments, but for her precious legacy. But 
these treasures are useless to this country unless Christ go with 
them and before them. They have poured forth hundreds and 
thousands of millions into the lap of earth ; they have enriched 
thrones and subjects in all lands; they control the merchandise of 
China and India to-day. Yet the nation that produces them is 
poor and ignorant and blind and naked ; a nation peeled and rob- 
bed by its own masters ; a nation of blood and strife and desola- 
tion. How its splendid ceremonials of service, and magnificent 
altars and vestments,, and golden shrines, and silver altar railings, 
and unbounded pomp and parade are rebuked by this poverty and 
peacelessness of its people ! Christ must come to Mexico. Even 
so, come Lord Jesus, and come quickly. 

The text for this sermon was Pachuca and Real del Monte, or 
Royal Mount. If a pun were allowable, it might be anglicized into 
Mount of Reals, the silver York shilling of the country, or worse 
yet, and more Englishy, into the Real Mount, for most people would 



134 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

fancy that that mount only had reality which was a mount of silver. 
The two are properly one, Pachuca and Real del Monte, the former | 
being the city, the latter the hills behind it, many of which are reg- 
ularly and largely mined, and the topmost one of which, six miles | 
from the city, and the seat of several mines, being known exclusive- ; 
ly by that title. 

Here, too, are about three hundred English people, seventy-five 
workmen, and overseers, with their families. Two Spanish Protest- \ 
ant congregations are here gathered. The threefold cord of silver f 
mines, and English and Spanish Church work, was too much for j 
revolvers and robbers to overcome, and so we are off for Pachuca. 

That Saturday morning on which we started was January i8th, > 
1873. Perhaps you remember it where you lived. I doubt not that I 
it was stinging cold, for even here it was cool enough for an over- 
coat when rushing along with the open windows of a fireless car. 1 
One of the party picked up an icicle of a hand's length and half \ 
its breadth, at a station a few miles from the city, the only bit of ice 
I have seen growing all this season. The sunny side of a house 
was pleasant that morning. That was all. Long before noon it =: 
was sultry. Overcoats were off and umbrellas up, and we wilted < 
under the torrid sun. How was it up your way ? 

Pachuca lies about sixty miles from Mexico to the north, and a 
little to the east. Our railroad takes us forty miles to Omatuska, 
where a breakfast and a stage await us. The first ate — and a 
goodly one it was to eat — the second is mounted. The party is 
four : two ministers, and two railroaders, a general, and a banker, - 
leaders in one of the projected Mexican invasions. The stage-ride ' 
is about forty miles, the distance this way being a third greater • 
than straight across the country, but a third less of coach-ride. 
The morning is splendid. The sun has warmed to his work at this ; 
ten and a half o'clock, but not fierce in burning. The road passes I 
through a landscape of beauty and wealth and emptiness. Two ■: 
or three haciendas, or plantations, cover almost the whole of the 
distance. The first stretches for six or eight miles, and is given 
up almost entirely to the culture of pulqui. 



MAGUEY PLANT, AND ITS HEART 135 

It is pitiful to see these miles and miles of acres surrendered to 
this pestiferous production. Yet it is pleasant to look upon, as 
was the fruit Eve tasted and Adam ate, man being generally greed- 
ier in crime than woman. The fields are laid out with mathemat- 
ical exactness. The maguey plant, for that is the name of the pul- 
qui bearer, is a large aloe, with grand, broad green leaves, very broad 
and very green. The plants stand about ten feet apart, in rows 
twenty feet from each other, so that the field looks like a nursery 
of dark, lustrous green bushes. You can see down these green 
alleys sometimes for miles in this clearest of airs. They radiate 
regularly from every plant, a perpetual chess-board of tropical lux- 
uriance. They are of various stages of growth, from the infant of 
days to the patriarch of seven to ten years. 

The latter is about to yield his white heart for the delight and 
ruin of the people. He is about four feet high, sometimes more, 
and spreads over as much or more from the short, thick, bulb-like 
stem. Sometimes he is' ripe at eight years, more usually ten. The 
owners thus gather a crop from one-eighth to one-tenth of their 
shrubs annually. When it is ripe, they thrust the knife near or 
into the root, so as to prevent its farther growth. The leaves fall 
over, the bowl-like centre swells with the juices pressing into it. 
It looks of the capacity of a couple of water-pails. This is of a 
milky look, and sweet, it is said, at this time. It is taken out twice 
a day for four months, so that one good plant yields four or five 
hundred gallons of this substance. 

This is put into ox-skins, a little of the old pulqui is added for 
fermentation, and the new is made worse. So delicate is this sub- 
stance at the start, that a pinch of salt or any other mal-affinity will 
destroy the whole crop if it is put into one of these skins and gets 
passed from one to another. An overseer, being dismissed, took 
this sweet (or sour) revenge on his master, and by one drop of 
acid, or salt, spoiled a crop worth a thousand dollars. He was ar- 
rested and imprisoned for this petty but powerful revenge. 

If it is so sensitive when young, it gets bravely over it, for a more 
disgustingly smelling and tasting substance than it is when old the 



1' 



136 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

depravity of man has never yet discovered. Rotten eggs are fra- 
grant to its odor, and pigs' swill sweet to its taste. I wish that 
overseer would go into the business of spoiling the crops, and 
drive the whole iniquity from the face of the land and the face of 
the people. It has a sweet cider taste in the days of its youth, but 
rapidly corrupts as that does, only worse, the climate being hotter, 
into a sour, stinking, abominable beverage. 

What would Dr. Bowditch do with this tropical drunkenness? 
He says lust is the vice of tropics, liquor of the temperate zones. 
As he would encourage, with modifications, the latter in Boston, of 
course he must the former in Mexico. Yet here is drunkenness 
as bad as any in Ireland, Germany, England, or the United States, 
and on a tropical plant of the country. He had better move his 
Board of Un-health here, and proceed to sit on this phenomenon. 
It will all be owed, I suppose he will say, to the lofty height of this 
table-land, which puts it in a temperate zone. "Logic is logic, 
that's all I say." 

Another peculiar and proper quality of this plant is its animal 
productions ; at least so I was informed, but I doubt the infor- 
mation. These are said to be three : a white rat, a white, and 
a brown worm. These nice creatures are made great, like Cffisar, 
by what they feed on ; and, according to these people, are ahead 
of Caesar, for they are not only great but good. They are served 
up as delicacies to rich and poor. Fried worms and broiled rat 
would make a proper accompaniment to pulqui. My informant 
rejoiced himself in the name of Julius Caesar. He was also a fa- 
mous cook. The punster of the crowd objected to this Diet of 
Worms. But it was rat-ion al. 

Hills rise on our left, as we move north by east, well clad in the 
ho"t and purple sunlight, well stripped of all other drapery ; an aque- 
duct half a mile long strides across a deep gully, bearing water af- 
ter the high Roman fashion, from Pachuquita, or Little Pachuca, to 
Omatuska. The half-way station is only a stopping-place under the 
trees, with a pulqui shop and a fruit-stand on the ground, of bana- 
nas, oranges, and pea-nuts. A cavalcade of horses drives up. Are 



THE GOVERNOR'S HACIENDA. 137 

they robbers ? Here is where they congregate. They look enough 
like them " to fill the bill," as they say out West. Well got up in 
light-brown leather trowsers, with silvered buttons and loops close- 
ly running up the sides, wide, gray felt sombreros, silver trappings 
on horses ; they evidently need money and have not much. Will 
they make our littles into their mickle ? 

They turn out protectors rather than robbers, a mistake made 
often in this doubting world. They are a blessing in disguise. 
The road is dangerous a few leagues onward, and they are sent as 
an escort. Poor escort they prove, for they gallop on ahead, and 
that is the last we see of the gay riders. 

The next hacienda, where the danger chiefly lies, is owned by the 
governor of the State of Hidalgo ; and, it is said, by way of slan- 
der undoubtedly, that he lets the robbers pillage the coach along 
the line of his farm, if they will leave that alone. Even so, I re- 
member it was correctly reported at a seminary where I once 
served, that a shrewd old farmer of the neighborhood was said to 
have kept his orchards untouched by leading the students, who had 
too much of the old Adam and Eve in them, to the choicest apple- 
trees in his neighbor's orchards. At any rate, his splendid orchard 
never seemed touched by that school frost, and the others often 
were. Whether the story of this governor or that farmer is true 
or not, quien sabe ? 

All I know is, that his place, like the other's orchard, is by far 
the finest in the country. The maguey plant stretches for miles 
in perfect order and beauty. Barley and wheat, and other crops 
green with youth, or yellow with age, spread out lovely to the eye. 
A rich, dark hollow of earth, circled by a darker if not richer rim 
of earth, five to eight miles across, a piece of landscape held in the 
hollow of your eye, if not the hollow of your hand, made a gem in 
centre and setting, such as one rarely sees, especially when the 
flashing Southern sun, pouring through a brisk and stimulating at- 
mosphere, in this rare ether over eight thousand feet above the sea, 
made the gem yet more radiant and transparent. I well-nigh en- 
vied the governor his spot, robbers and pulqui included. 

10 



138 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

A few miles round a spur brings us in sight of Pachuca. Real del 
Monte had long been visible, and the high, dark range of which it is 
a mere point of silver. A lowlier range hid the city. It appears 
now, lying along the base of that black and treeless mass, a collec- 
tion of low, white roofs, with a church or two towering with dome 
and steeple ; they use both always here, though the steeple never 
terminates with a spire. The only decent object in these cities, 
sometimes the only visible object seen from a distance, is the 
church. Every thing is unduly abased in order that that may be 
unduly exalted. Our school -houses, capitols, and tall dwellings 
and stores, make our beautiful spires chiefs among associates, not 
solitary masters of an enslaved population. 

But Pachuca has one sight that outshines its churches. In front 
of it lies a valley of exquisite beauty. The trees and plants stud 
it thick with emeralds. A paradise the Persians would call it — 
why not we ? The verdure spreads out for a mile or two, and per- 
fectly completes the picture of the tall, brown mountains that over- 
hang the town, and the white walls that hug their lower declivities. 
Brown, white, and green glow together in this summer afternoon of 
January. Oh, ye frozen and sepulchred home folks, a white ceme- 
tery of Nature, with icy winds raving over it, how rapturous this de- 
licious landscape ! How I regret that you are not here to enjoy it 
— that the North could not be transported, body and business, to 
this dulcet clime for six months of every year ! 

You are needed ; for this exquisite paradise is as full of devils as 
the primal one, when man had gone over to the enemy. It is not 
very safe to walk its streets on Sunday, and hardly possible at mid- 
night. So "the trail of the serpent is over it all." You may pre- 
fer your icy atmosphere and snowy covering with peace, safety, com- 
fort, and prosperity, a life in death, to this tropical glory, with its 
assassinations and robberies, a death in life. All things are equal, 
after all. 

We ride to the hotel, but are met by Mr. Comargo, the superm- 
tendent of the mines, who invites us to the Casa Grande, or Grand 
House, belonging to the company, at which place this story began. 



INSPECTION OF THE MINE. 139 

We pass under its heav}'' portal of barred gates of wood and thin 
iron, and past the large guard that, armed and equipped, protects 
the entrance, into a large, square, open court. Up the broad stairs, 
with their gilt and burnished balustrades, among rich tropical plants 
and flowers, we ascend to the balcony. Here the conductor, as he 
is called, meets us, a small, gentlemanly person, and makes his 
house our own. Elegant apartments open on every side of this 
court, and abundant flowers line the entire balcony. 

" We have lighted on our feet," exclaims one of the party. No- 
body, for once, disagrees with the observation, the only point of 
agreement in all the journey. 

Dusty garments are brushed, and dusty faces washed, and we 
mount horses for a ride up the side of the mountain to a mine. 
Horses before us, horses behind us, horses to the right of us, horses 
to the left of us ; thus we march into the narrow streets and up 
the narrower slips of the hill-side. A cavalcade more numerous 
than attends a European monarch accompanied these every-day 
travelers. Reason why ? Not that we were more than monarchs, 
but Pachuca is less safe to the conductor of its mines than Paris 
ever was to Napoleon. He would be a prize to the kidnapers. 

We inspect the outside of the mine, from the crushing of the ore' 
to the smelting of the silver, and return to a sumptuous dinner, a 
lively reunion, and a luscious bed. In its comfortable embrace we 
dream of Elysium, although 

" We should suspect some danger nigh, 
Where we possess delight." 

Our first peril is past, Pachuca is reached. Our second cometh 
quickly. 

Just after we reached the town, on Saturday afternoon, we passed 
a building near the little plaza with " Miners' Arms " over its door. 
It looked Englishy English to the last degree. Some equally En- 
glishy English persons stood before the door. They noticed -we 
were strangers, and one of them, a tall, plainly-dressed person, came 
across the street and spoke to us. He had heard that a Methodist 



I40 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

preacher was coining to spend the Sabbath, and he made a dash 
at random at this couple, hoping to bag that game. He succeeded. 
It was a Mr. Prout, for whom I had a letter of introduction. He 
accompanied us to the Casa, and then sought out an elder member, 
Richard Rule, Esq., who for years had had preaching and class- 
meeting at his house. To show the peril of the place, that night 
he was sent for to come and see about arrangements for Sabbath 
services. Guards were sent to accompany him to the Casa, and to 
accompany him home again. Yet in the day-time there is but little 
if any danger. 

The next morning I attended a class-meeting at Richard Rule's. 
It met at eight o'clock. But the long ride and the late night made 
me a little late, and the venerable leader was at prayer when I 
entered. It seemed strange to hear the voice of prayer in a Sun- 
day-morning class in this far-off land in our own tongue. And yet 
it seemed not unnatural. A full and devout petition it was, cover- 
ing all the ground, as if the fewness of the number present allowed 
larger liberty to each utterance. It was eminently Scriptural in 
form, as all English prayers are, and rich in faith, in humility, and 
in assurance. The one other English peculiarity it also exhibited, 
devotion to fatherland. He prayed for the " favored land of their 
birth " and *' for the benighted land " in which they dwelt. That 
feeling is wrought deeper in English nature than in that of any 
other people. America unconsciously copies it, but does not sur- 
pass it. 

Four members, all males, gave testimony to a present and a full 
salvation, and responses showed the warmth of the heart still on 
fire with God's love. 

It was good to be there. No mine in all this richest district of 
the earth was so rich as this, nay, was infinitely less rich. These 
• had searched for wisdom as for hid treasures, and had found her : 

" Wisdom divine, who tells the price 
Of wisdom's costly merchandise ? 
Wisdom to silver we prefer, 
And gold is dross, compared with her." 



1 



SERVICES IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH. 141 

How rich these poor men were. Only one possessed any means 
or mines. Yet all were rejoicing in eternal and infinite treasure- 
houses, laid up by the same Redeemer who stored these mounts 
with silver, in that Mount of God, His Royal Mount, the Real del 
Monte of the heavens and the universe, for all those who love and 
serve Him. 

The house of Mr. Rule stands in a garden, with large, luscious 
plants blooming about. The oleander, banana, fig, and unknown 
trees and blooms fill the -retreat with life and loveliness. High 
walls hide it from the passer's eyes. It is secluded and central. 
I have quite fallen in love with these dead walls without, and 
beauty, luxury, and comfort within. I am not sure that it is not an 
improvement on our system, more open without, and less secluded 
within. Not as you are in your winter-bound firesides, 

" Shut in 
By the tumultuous privacy of storm," 

but by a privacy which makes a perpetual summer for your private 
pleasure, though this sometimes shuts out a tumult worse than 
snow ever creates. It makes the street unlovely, but not the home. 
These rough walls and gates open on luxury and repose. The 
high wall is not needed to make this picture. The gardens might 
be open to all eyes, and the court-yard only be for home consump- 
tion. 

At eleven o'clock Rev. Mr. Parks, the Bible Agent, preached to 
a goodly congregation on " The love of Christ constraineth us ;" 
and at two, another full house gathered to attend the third serv- 
ice of the day. "Whom having not seen ye love," is the text 
dwelt upon, the counterpart and complement of the morning's 
discourse. The baptism of three infants, and the administration 
of the Lord's Supper to seven persons, prolongs the service till four 
o'clock. The full house sits solemn and reverent to the close. 

A service in Spanish follows, conducted by Dr. Guerro, a physi- 
cian of the place. It is not so full as usual, owing to the length of 
the preceding meeting, but there is a fair assemblage. Some fine- 
looking young men participated. The service has been compiled 



142 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



by him from that of Dr. Riley, and is entitled "El Culto de la 
Iglesia Reformada en Pachuca." It is orthodox and devout. But 
the service needs more liberty extemporaneously, and besides 
needs additions of prayer, and social and class meetings, and Sun- 
day-schools. It is the seed, but not the flower nor fruit. 

The conductor of the meeting is a Protestant against Romanism, 
and, like most of that class here, has not yet advanced much be- 
yond the first principles of that protest. 

The elaboration of the Christian system, independent of all the 
previous errors and formalities, into a life and being of its own — 
this work is yet to be done. It needs organization. Church order, 
breadth, life. It will come, and that speedily. It was delightful 
to find in this mountain town, and among this degraded and de- 
praved population, a godly few casting off the shackles of a false 
culture, and forming a reformed Church. May they speedily re- 
generate the town. 

We come back to our agreeable quarters across the plaza, which 
from our first crossing it in the morning until now has been crowd- 
ed with sellers and buyers. The pavement is lined with rows of 
merchant-men and merchant-women with every sort of ware — fruit, 
fish, flesh, coal, grasses, trinkets, muslins, toys — a Vanity Fair of 
Sunday desecration. The stores under the arcade are equally 
busy. The church is open, and has its two services a day, but the 
crowds are in the market-place, and the devil holds his service all 
the day. 

He is represented in a huge, gross picture in the church on the 
plaza with a smashing tail, a good deal longer than his body, driv- 
ing the sinful ghosts to hell. He is out here in calico and cloth, 
in a white, dirty woolen blanket, dropping down before and behind, 
with a slit in the middle, through which the head is passed, in thin 
blue cloth mantillas that cover the woman's head and shoulders 
and mouth. Here he is buying and selling, and getting gain and 
loss. Let the true Church of Christ arise and abate this crime that 
smells to heaven. 

I was not a little wearied with this long day's work. From 



AN ARMED ESCORT. 143 

eight to five, with scarce an intermission, had I been attending to 
the Lord's business. A summer day, sultry as August, yet not op- 
pressive, it has been a day of delights, "where no crude surfeit 
reigns." 

The hills look soft in that sacred setting, and the fields did not 
strive in vain to look gay. They looked so without striving. The 
air was blessed, and I rejoiced to think that this ancient and rich 
realm would yet be the mount of the Lord, and its silver flow forth 
for the salvation of the world. 

Monday comes, and with it the old again, to offset the new of 
yesterday. The champing of bits and trampling of steeds below 
is a signal that we are invited to a ride. A ride is a small affair 
ordinarily in Arnerica, and even in Europe to-day, but not at the 
Casa Grande. The lord of the casa, Senor Comargo, descends 
the stairway, with pistol in his belt and a girdle of ball-cartridges 
about him. His horse has gun and sword hanging at its saddle- 
bow. Five visitors follow — two less powerfully armed, and two 
with no weapons save their tongues. Three horsemen precede 
this company, and twelve follow. A carriage and four mules are 
provided for any two of the party that may wish to accept the new 
style instead of the old. Thus protected and equipped, we ride 
through the awakening town. 

Why all this display? Not for display. This is the old, be- 
cause here the old still exists. This city is full of robbers, and so 
is the country. It is the chief mining centre of this region, and 
has only one equal in all this country. The building is the head- 
quarters of the mining company. It has two hundred thousand 
dollars in its vaults every fortnight. This it must transport sixty 
miles to Mexico. The reckless marauders of these hills long for 
these hid treasures more than for those still concealed in the earth 
all about them. They have attacked the building once and again, 
and sometimes in large force, three to four hundred men. They 
would attack the commandant, or conductor, as he is the chief rep- 
resentative of the company, and his capture might be worth many 
thousands to his kidnapers. Only last week, in company with four 



144 ^^^ NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

of his horsemen, he broke through a band of thirty-five robbers, 
under a famous bandit leader, kilHng one and wounding several 
others. 

This company has some valuable nuggets for such marauders. 
Here is the president of the nearly finished Vera Cruz Railway, 
Mr. Gibbs, of England, as witty as he is wise, and wise as he is wit- 
ty, one of the least "stuck up" of well-educated Englishmen 1 
have ever met. He is a representative of Oxford scholarship and 
London business. He can scan Greek lines or Mexican land- 
scapes with equal accuracy. He confesses to England's aristo- 
cratic detestation of the Yankee until the war compelled her to 
see, first, that we had pluck ; second, success ; and third, and log- 
ically, that we were right. That is the usual construction of an 
Englishman's syllogism, pluck first, principle last. Then, of course, 
we ceased to be whittling, nasal Yankees, and turned into gentle- 
men. He breaks forth at the mouth, like all punsters, and makes 
fun for the million (of dollars) that rides at his side. 

The head of the house of Rosecrans, a rival railroad enterprise, 
is also here — General Palmer, self-contained, ready to thrust the 
point of an argument into his antagonist, as whilom the point of 
his sword, and that as this without malice, though now as then unto 
the death. 

Mr. Parish, the learned and traveled member of the party, is at 
home equally in the best modern languages and modern society. 
It is a striking evidence of the union of culture and business, these 
polished and highly-educated gentlemen on railroad thoughts in- 
tent. It shows, what ought to be the case more and more, the best 
university training a preliminary to the entrance into every pro- 
fession. 

The agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, a Congrega- 
tional clergyman, is the fourth ; whom, as he is lying awake on his 
bed in the room where I am now writing, it will not answer to say 
much about, or I should see the sheeted living, as Caesar did the 
" sheeted dead," walking the floor and squaring oif. England and 
America, despite Geneva decisions and the peace societies, would 



A GARDEN OF BEAUTY. 145 

be at war. He is well satisfied with England, at least when talk- 
ing with an American, though I doubt not he will set forth all 
those American arguments as to Britain's conditions and needs 
when he gets back to " Our Old Home," and will forget, perhaps, 
to put in the quotation marks. He is doing an excellent work 
here in planting the Bible over the land. 

The last who mounts the horse, and who rides muy nial (you 
do not know but that that means very good, and I shall not tell you 
that it means very bad), is not, perhaps, representing his fellow-min- 
isters so much in their horse-riding reputation as in eating and en- 
during. He is seeking out this land for the Church, as his associ- 
ates are for the Bible and the railway, a threefold cord which is not 
easily broken, and which will yet make this beautiful clime "bound 
with gold chains about the feet of God." 

The road ascends the mountain side. For two thousand feet 
and two leagues it winds and climbs. The basin of Pachuca lies 
below, soft in the brown morning, yet unkissed of the sun, which 
yellows the eastern sky, but does not glow upon its mountain-tops. 
The green frees, flowers, and maguey plant make a garden of beau- 
ty of that basin, lying low in the hollow of treeless hills, " rock-rib- 
bed and ancient as the sun." It is less luxuriant than the woods 
and ferns of the Hot Lands, but its contrast with the inclosing hill- 
sides and the brisk September air makes its verdant loveliness all 
the more lovely. 

The mountains are without forest, but a purple verdure covers 
them — a royal mantle of sunlight and shadow, dewy, tender, vel- 
vety. Not since I looked on Hymettus and Pentelicus have I seen 
such a rich hue clothe barren mountains. The composition of the 
rock has something to do with it ; the purple of porphyry imparts 
its color to the hills. 

Iztaccihuatl glitters on the point of its snowy lance. There is 
some debate as to which of the three ice mountains it is, and so 
the poet of the company — for " we keeps our poet," like Day & 
Martin — breaks forth in rhymes on each of the trio. First, he 
exclaims. 



146 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Why all this palaver 
About Orizava ?* 

Then adds, toastingly and drunkenly, 

We'll tip the brandy-bottle 
To old Iztaccihuatl. 

And teetotally concludes, 

We'll drain our water-kettle 
To Popocatepetl. 

Of course he would have gone on thus all day had he not been 
held in. He was pouring forth the terrible rhymes as if they were 
avalanches. " Slaver" it was found would rhyme and reason with 
this Orizava, and " throttle " had to be put to the voluble neck of 
this Iztaccihuatl ; while a lot of mispronounced rhymes, such as 
" settle," " met ill," " nettle," and so on, were being mustered into 
the service of the grand old monarch of Mexico. It was time to 
stop the rhymed nonsense, and it stopped. Sober debates on tem- 
perance and other good themes came to the front. 

The light slides down the mountain (" coasts," as a Yankee ought 
to say), down its smooth and lustrous sides, and soon fills all the 
hollow of the hills with splendor. The soul sends its shafts of light 
upward as those of the soulless world fall downward, and in silent 
prayer and praise ascribes the honor, and glory, and dominion, and 
power thus seen, and the infinitely more and greater not seen, unto 
Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb forever. 

One side of the roadway leaps down sheer and profound, and the 
other opens ravines, or descends in mountain slopes, where easily 
"the robber rends his prey" from the slowly -climbing coach and 
rider. There is a thicket of bushes at one of these bends, which 
is their favorite haunt, and yet no one thinks of the simple reme- 
dy of cutting up that ambuscade. Fifteen minutes and a hatchet 
would destroy that fortification. Why is it not done ? Quien sabe? 

* "B" and "v" are pronounced exactly alike by the natives; so the word 
Orizaba is pronounced as in this couplet. 



I 



A FEUDAL STRONGHOLD. 147 

Two hours of such slow and steadfast climbing bring the feudal 
cavalcade to the Real Castle, or the Castle of the Real. 

Here a yet more feutlal incident increases the delusion. We 
draw up to a high, huge dead wall without a window. The gate 
opens, and we enter. The warder draws near and makes his obei- 
sance to the conductor, a gracious action on the part of each. A 
low room, not loftier than those usually seen in the ruined castles 
of the Rhine, welcomes us, and refreshments are served up. The 
company then proceed to inspect the castle. They kept saying to 
each other, " How completely feudal !" " Was there ever any thing 
more perfect?" "This is the real article." "As it should be on 
the Real," keeps up the execrable punster. 

At the entrance of the building proper is a well with a windlass 
over it. To the ropes of this windlass were attached pieces of ma- 
guey or hemp sack, a quarter of a yard wide, made into a sort of 
seat. In this seat sat the workmen, and, clinging to the rope, were 
let down ten or twelve hundred feet, "poco mas y menos," as they all 
say here to every thing (" a little more or less)." They are let down 
and dragged up every day. 

Still fancying I had entered a castle, and a little bewildered by 
this mode of treating its inmates, I was led to a court with rooms 
long and wide opening out of it, and long benches stretching on 
either side against the walls, which had that horrid odor that be- 
longs to the wards of a prison, and which is unlike any other smell. 
Another step, and a barred door, heavy and thick, made of cross- 
pieces that let in the light and air, but not liberty, revealed the fact 
that this mediaeval castle was indeed a prison. So its looks did 
not deceive itself. That well was to let down criminals to work in 
the mines. 

It took off the edge of our vanity a little to learn this fact. The 
castle is reduced in vocation, though not in manners. Don Quix- 
ote can fancy it a castle, though it be only z. presidio. Those straps 
of maguey fibre, in which they were let down that thousand feet, 
were homeopathic in their nature. Pulqui brought them here, and 
the fibre of its leaf drops them there. I had seen pits like this in 



148 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

European castles, as black and bottomless seemingly, where they 
dropped their victims, to be brought up, not as these are at night- 
fall, but in the morn only of the Resurrectton. 

In two of the cells were three leading bandits of the country 
awaiting execution. I only saw one of them. He was a youth of 
twenty, fair -faced, smooth-faced, with calm manners and a mild 
dark eye : so pretty a lad one rarely sees. Is it possible that he 
is a chief murderer ? Even so. Appearances here, as elsewhere, 
are deceitful. Yet not so. Leaders are rarely demonstrative men, 
Byron was not at fault in describing human nature when he painted 

his chief cut-throat as 

" The mildest-mannered man 
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat ;" 

and describes him on a balmy eve as he leans over the taffrail and 

" Looks upon the flood : 
His thoughts were calm, but were of blood." 

This youth's mien and meditation were alike calm and bloody. 
He would have put a shot through the warden as briskly and gay- 
ly as through a bird. He was trained in crime, and, though still 
beardless, was gray in guilt. How many of our worst offenders ac- 
complish their end before they reach a ripe manhood ! The gal- 
lows has more victims under thirty than over. Sin ripens fast, and 
the lad of fifteen who casts off parental restraint and plunges into 
vice, before he is twenty-five is apt to die a debauchee or a demon. 
Christ and the devil recruit their forces from the youth. A Chris- 
tian or a criminal is the decision usually made before the twenties 
are touched. Despise not the converted boy. Nurse his childish 
piety, lest it become youthful impiety ere you are aware. 

Sadly we left the fair young face, so soon to be mould and dust, 
and came into the bright sunshine. How gloomily glowered that 
sun ! The prison was no longer a palace, but a tomb. We gladly 
mount and ride away from the grim recesses. You have had 
enough of the Old ; now again for the New. 

As we emerge into the outer air our eyes light on chimneys, tall 



I 



^ 



THE COST OF MINING. 14^ 

and numerous, scattered up and down the steep hill-sides. My 
English companions thought they had seen the like in Yorkshire. 
Yet the chief if not only likeness is in the chimneys, and in the 
fact that they are used in running steam - engines of immense 
bulk, which are engaged in pumping water out of the mines. 
This was the New. No such contrivances had the cavalcades of 
the Old times ever seen. One of these engines, of two thousand 
horse-power, is beautifully lifting its ponderous arms, as polished 
and quiet as is its Manchester builder. It is an evidence of the 
superiority of our age. Two thousand horse-power there in that 
engine, twenty in this escort : one hundred times is the New above 
the Old ! , 

It \s>'z.festa day,- and the natives are idling round. But the en- 
gines are busy, being worked by Englishmen, who know no festas 
but Sundays and Christmas. A bull -fight is to come off, and es- 
pecial stir among the natives is evident. If they would fight their 
sins, and idleness, and errors of faith, and other infirmities, half as 
zealously as they fight the harmless bulls, they would " get on," as 
our English friends say, vastly more ; but religious error stifles all 
energy, order, and improvement. 

These immense engines teach us the costliness of the mining 
business. It may be an easy matter to prospect a mine, but it is 
not so easy a matter to work it. That costs a fortune, and reduces 
this royal business to the common level of farming and shoe-mak- 
ing. After looking over the works at this spot, we take to our 
horses, I gratefully getting a seat in the carriage, and whirl down 
to Velasco. 

Six miles of rapid descent it is, winding round and round the 
spurs of handsomely wooded hills, which woods the steam-devil, as 
the Mexicans call the steam-engine, is fast devouring. In its lo- 
comotive form it devours miles ; in all forms, forests. The hills 
are not unlike those of Vermont, but steeper, deeper, and grand- 
er, with warmer, thicker-leaved, and darker-tinted woods. Some 
of the gorges are sublime. Opposite these ravines tower high, 
blank, black mountains, some of which are curiously crowned with 



150 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

basaltic rocks, that look like towers, laid in order far up into the 
air. At times these columns take possession of a stretch of ridge, 
and make a series of fortifications not unlike Ehrenbreitstein, or a 
range of towers like a cathedral. They had shot their straight, 
hot barrels up through the various molten rocks of porphyry and 
granite, and capped the climax with their rounded finish. 

Velasco is a fortified hacienda, where the ores of Real del 
Monte are reduced. These ores, being less inclined to yield to 
water than those of Pachuca, are here calcined, ground to powder, 
dropped from hoppers through leather tubes into strong barrels, 
which are also filled with water, quicksilver, sulphate of copper, 
and other chemicals, and a quantity of round stones about the size 
of small paving-stones. These are sent whirling round and round 
until the dissolution of the silver from the soil is effected, when 
the contents are drawn off". Below you see the residuum of the 
barrel, flowing out over troughs into bowls slightly inclined, whose 
lower edge holds the heavy white quicksilver, and upper, the light- 
er and slower precious stuff which it costs so much labor to se- 
cure. 

Attached to these works is a handsome house, deserted. No of- 
ficer dare live in it. Not long since its walls were scaled by a rob- 
ber band, though they could find but little booty. Its garden is 
full of flowers, and I pluck a half-dozen rose-buds and blossoms 
as a specimen of the middle of January, which I commend to my 
frozen brothers of the North. They may retort that that robber 
thorn is worse than their frozen buds. I do not deny it, but hope 
when the railroad and the churches of America get possession of 
the land that the Mexican will be changed into a Methodist, or 
better, if better there be, as most of these Englishmen have been, 
and you can then have no excuse for shivering below the zeroes, 
instead of enjoying perpetual spring and summer, from October to 
April, among these torrid altitudes. 

Three leagues more over hill and dale, amidst an opening and 
entrancing landscape, now by barren water-courses, now along high 
uplands, over which canter our horses. I am on the back again. 



THE HACIENDA OF REGLA. 151 

and likely to be on my back with this fierce and unused riding. 
So we go gayly on to Regla. 

The hills are well stripped by the charcoal vender and the steam- 
engine devourer, and look like some of the brown, barren, rocky 
sides of New Hampshire in July. The sun pours a midday torrid 
heat upon us, and makes us like that too-willing lass of whom it is 
said that, when her lover said '"Wilt thou?' she wilted." So did 
we, though the heat that wilted us was from without, and not within. 
San Miguel shone out on the plain below, said to be one of the 
prettiest of Mexican towns. Our road lies to the left, and its beau- 
ty is left also. The plains in which this beauty lingers stretch 
far away to the east and north, bounded by tall dark mountains 
that seem to jealously guard the sleeping beauty below. At the 
hour of noon our tired steeds and more tired selves enter the gates 
of the hacienda of Regla. 

This hacienda lies in a ravine, with a high wall going up to and 
on its outer edge, and with entrances well barred and guarded. 
Before its gate is a fine fountain, set in the side of the hill, flowing 
through a lion's mouth inserted in the rocks. Around the carved 
stone rim of the basin women and children are filling their water- 
pots. The water tastes delicious after our hot and dusty ride ; far 
better, I doubt not, than the brandies and other "hot and rebell- 
ious liquors" would have done, which are still too. freely offered, 
and far too freely imbibed. 

The English have brought valuable money and men to this coun- 
try, but have not yet brought total abstinence ; and too many Amer- 
icans are still ashamed of that teetotal excellence which, though it 
has not entirely conquered that land, has given its laborers and 
leaders more than half the prosperity and comfort they enjoy. If 
it could come here and drive out the legion of devils which the cup 
of inebriety introduces, it would be a blessing of blessings to all 
the people. Amen, so let it be ! 

Leaving our horses at the gate, we are led by the house where 
dinner (they call it breakfast here) is awaiting us, under vast arches, 
alongside of a paved brook, now nearly waterless, and whose blocks 



r^ 



1^2 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

look like Broadway, so smooth and even and slippery are their 
shape and aspect. A few rods farther, and we reach the upper 
section of the chasm. 

The Mexican Giant's Causeway is before us. We had regretted 
that Britain had one advantage of America in her celebrated Fin- 
gal's Cave, and now we are satisfied. Even that crown is trans- 
ferred to our favored land. The columns of basalt rise on each 
side of the ravine from seventy-five to one hundred feet in height. 
The opening is a few hundred feet wide at the mouth, but comes 
together at the upper edge, with only a slight chasm, which lets out 
the waters of the river, that tumbles, a pretty cascade, some two- 
score of feet into a pretty pool below. You are fifty feet or so 
above the pool. The columns rise one hundred feet sheer over 
your head. They are five-sided, and fit each to each as close as 
bricks. Some of the outer ones are split and otherwise marred ; 
one or two seem to have lost both their head and their heels, and 
hang to their place by a sort of attraction of adhesion. If that 
gave way, the attraction of gravitation would topple them over upon 
our heads — a not very attractive attraction. The debris of their 
fallen fellows lies all about us. Each reveals a round core of light 
slate-color, that seems to have been built around after the pentag- 
onal model. Where that core came from, and how it was grown 
around, I leave to those who find sermons in stones to ascertain. 
I prefer less hardened subjects. 

There seems to be no end inward to the serried ranks. They 
are packed close, and each shaft reveals others that inclose it, and 
that are ready to take its place should sun and shower cause it to 
fall. If they could be utilized by some Yankee for house or monu- 
ment building, we should soon see an end of the exquisite ravine. 
They are slaughtering the like tall living shafts that have stood to- 
gether these centuries and centuries from Maine to Michigan, and 
Michigan to Mexico. Thanks many {jtmchas gracias, to be ver\- 
Mexic) that they can not cut these down, saw them into stone lurii- 
ber, and cart them away for Chicago and Boston burnings. Just 
penalty was that, for that sin of ourselves and our fathers? 




THE PALISADES OF REGLA. 



TRAMPING OUT THE SILVER. ' 1^5 

This spot, unheard of by me unto this hour, unmentioned by 
any tourist I have read (and I never read one on Mexico), is now 
formally introduced to the American public. If you come to Mex- 
ico, come to Pachuca ; and if to Pachuca, to the basaltic ravine of 
Regla. 

We lean over the balcony of our hospitable quarters, awaiting 
breakfast, and see the horses tread out the silver. A yard eighty 
rods square, Z^^^* mas y menos, is laid down to this work. Beds of 
black mud are located over it, to the untrained eye precisely like 
the earth about it. But how different to the eye that is trained ! 
This black mud is silver, mixed badly with other earths, mixed also 
with salt, sulphate of copper, and quicksilver, that, under the pain- 
ful pressure of tramping steeds, are to liberate it and make it the 
beauty and joy of man — and plague also, as are most beauties and 
joys. Two hundred horses are engaged in tramping out the silver. 
Their tails are shaven, the mud has splashed up on their heads and 
backs, and they look so woe-begone, as if their labor were degrading, 
that it is hard for the uninitiated eye to believe they are horses at 
all. Mules, and even asses, they get degraded to. The making of 
silver seems to be as debasing as much of the spending of it is. 
Eighty of these march round one circle, five abreast, close together. 
Four such circles employ over two hundred horses and mules. 
Over three hundred and fifty are owned by the company, and some- 
times all of them are put into service at once. The barrel system 
of Velasco is also employed, and water, barrels, and horses make 
the ore into silver. 

After a most sumptuous breakfast, served by Mr. Rule, the Super- 
intendent of Regla, a breakfast cooked in the best English fashion 
(and there is none better), we start for the last and not least of the 
points of interest that have drawn our feet and eyes this way. The 
horses that are brought out for us, how different from the shorn- 
tailed nags that are swinging around those circles ! The gayest 
and handsomest is most unwisely but generously offered to me. 
He is a fine sprinkled white sorrel, and he has been in the stable 
many days. 



1^6 067? NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The best seat at the table, and the best dishes upon it, a minister 
may get used to. A Methodist minister certainly ouglit to be ready 
to accept the best horse, for has not much of his success come 
from his gifts and graces in that favorite department of human en- 
joyment ? He has abolished the parson's jog, which was as well 
known as the parson's coat, and made the " Gid-up " of Holmes's 
" One-horse Shay " as dusty a nothing as the shay itself. When 
the first itinerants drove into the country village on their smooth, 
fleet steeds, the eyes of the loafers about tavern and store were 
opened very wide. " Who is this feller who rides such a handsome 
critter ?" was the general inquiry. And when they found he was a 
preacher, their amazement grew like Fort Garry wheat in July. 
They had never seen it after this fashion. They would go and hear 
the minister, whose horse could beat the fastest racer of the Cor- 
ners, and they did go and hear, and found he could preach as well 
as he could ride. The way to a man's heart is through a horse, as 
those fathers found. 

I ought, too, to have been inspired by modern examples. I be- 
thought me of that presiding elder way down East, whose little 
beast used to leave all meaner things behind ; and who (the man, 
not the mare) was accustomed to say to all gayly-dressed horse- 
men, who rode up in buckskin gloves, shiny hat, horse and har- 
ness and all, as if to leave their dust upon his sorry team, ere he 
quickly passed out of their sight, " I beg pardon, sir, but I treat all 
alike." 

Alas ! that this dear, delightful brother so suddenly fled to the 
world above. Riding into his yard from his wide circuit, struck 
there with death, disembarking, and pausing by this companion of 
many a long journe}', he drops suddenly, never to rise again. The 
Pale Horse and its paler rider bear him swiftly away. Nay, the 
flaming chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof sweep him 
heavenward. 

I might also have bethought me of that other presiding elder 
in the Far West who, when his black ponies in an unwashed 
buggy slid by a costly, stately team, newly bought and burnished, 



A SPIRITED HORSE. ■ i^y 

turned to their crest-fallen owner as he passed, and suggested that 
he put those horses in the lumber-yard. 

But not the fathers nor the brothers could give me courage. I 
preferred to fall into the extravagance of Bishop Soule, of whom 
Bishop Roberts once remarked that he heard " he had sold his 
horse down South, and was coming home in a stage-coach," and he 
regretted the degeneracy of the Church, and the passing away of 
its heroic epoch. But that epoch had its vices as well as its vir- 
tues, and the perils of horse-jockeying worry the Conference novir 
in the passage of the ministers' characters far less than of yore. 

I get on my star-dusted steed — silver-dusted I ought to say in 
this country — and he leaps, and dances, and whirls, and plays his 
fantastic tricks. And I pull on the curb, and that cuts and mad- 
dens and makes him more antic, for that is the purpose of the 
curb here. 

Every thing goes by contraries. You unlock your door by turn- 
ing the key to the lintel, and not away from it; you open it out- 
ward. Your boots are made, so that left seems right, and right left, 
and look so after they are on. You take the same side in the 
street as your opposite, and so does he, and thus you go bowing 
and bobbing, neither able to get on or away. You eat your break- 
fast at noon, or later, and take your midday dinner about seven in 
the evening. So the curb, instead of steadying the horse, sets his 
mouth a-bleeding, and that makes him dance, which is very beauti- 
ful to riders and lookers-on. A knife thrust into his belly by the 
spurs, and into his mouth by the curb, gets up just the right degree 
of pain and madness that makes him lively and lovely. 

Mine has no spur, for which all thanks. The curb is enough. 
He scampers up the hill, among the rocks, regardless of rider ; flies 
down a steep rock slide, as if he would never stop ; caracoles along 
the edge of a ravine, or barranca, five hundred to a thousand feet 
deep, " like he knew," as they say in my Southern country. I was 
" awfully scared," lest he would just shake himself when on the edg- 
iest edge, and drop me overboard. But when we got up, and down, 
and up this rough lane alongside of the gorge, and the splendid 



1^8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

park opened out for miles, hard, smooth, carpeted with short, dry 
grass — how he did fly ! So did my coward Hps from their color. 
I was in no danger of witching this world with my horsemanship. 
" Muy mal " (very bad) was the muttered judgment of my score of 
Mexican escorts, and so was it mine. 




A MEXICAN GENERAL, 



There was a general in our troop — called Heneral here (an- 
other specimen of the contrary style of this people, for Cock-eral 
would be by far a more proper designation). This G — , H — , or 
C — eral was a cavalry officer all through the war. He had no- 
ticed what fine horses I had got, and how poorly I rode them, and 
he had had a suspicion that this one would fall to him ; so he had 
offered early to exchange his easy pacer for my furious charger. 
In a fit of vainglory I had declined. But that park, grass, and 
gamboling were enough for me. I was willing to swap horses in 



LA BARRANCA GRANDE. - i^g 

crossing this stream. I dismounted and gave my wayward steed 
to the Heneral. He rode him well. They flew together, mile and 
mile. I can not say that I felt very bad when I saw him, on re- 
turning, dismount and lead his horse for a long stretch, almost over 
the very ground where it had tossed me so. The frisky fellow was 
blown. The high altitude and his high spirits were too much for 
him, and he had run himself out. The short-lived glory died away, 
and this very short horse was very soon curried. 

That park on which we ascend is engirted with high purple 
hills. It is level, and hard as a dancing-floor, and the horses all 
dance as they touch it, and have a gay gallopade over it. It 
was my ignorance, probably, of that sort of floor practice that made 
me make so poor a display. The Coloradoist of the party said it 
was very like the parks of that country. It is fine for grazing, 
though I judge it is too high and dry for most other culture. A 
half hour brings us to its abrupt close. 

La Barranca Grande opens at our feet. You do not know what 
a barranca is? Nor did I till that day. I wish you could learn it 
the same way. Conceive of a level plain forty miles wide, with a 
border of mountains. Ride along over it leisurely and rapidly, a 
little of both, chatting or singing as the spirit moves, when you 
halt, without reason so far as you can see. You move on a rod or 
two slowly, and down you look two thousand feet (ten times the 
height of Trinity steeple or Bunker Hill Monument), down, down, 
down. That is no black chasm into which you are peering, but a 
broad garden, green and brown. Here a hill rolls up in it, a mole 
scarcely noticed on its. handsome face. There a bamboo cot- 
tage hides itself without being hid. The green forests are full of 
deer. Bananas, oranges, every delight is flourishing there. A riv- 
er trickles through it, picking its glittering way down to the Gulf, 
two hundred miles away. The walls on the opposite side rise into 
wild, rocky mountains, and- both sides come seemingly together for- 
ty miles above — though it is only seeming, for the canon takes a 
turn, and goes on and up between the mountains. Eastward it has 
no visible end. It descends, it is said, through to the Gulf. 



l6o OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The sunlight of a warm September afternoon, so it feels, pours 
over the whole, glowing grandly on these mountains, pouring 
a flood of light on the upper terminations where the hills clasp 
hands over the valley, and glistening sweetly from the home-like 
landscape below. 

One would not tire of gazing, or of going down, though the latter 
is an hour's job, the former a second's. It is wonderful what great 
gifts God spreads out on the earth for his children, and how soli- 
tary the most of them are. Bryant could not make solitude more 
solitary than in those lines of his, 

" Where rolls the Oiegon and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings." 

So here sleeps this wonderful ravine, with its towering mountains, 
in sun or moon, in midnight blackness or midday splendor, and 
rarely looks on the face of man. Does not the Giver of every good 
and perfect gift enjoy His own gifts ? " For His pleasure they are 
and were created." Then the Barranca would be satisfied if no 
mortal eye ever took in its beauty. It smiles responsive to the 
smile of its Lord. 

Long we hang above the picture. At risk of life we creep to the 
outermost twig, and gaze down. It stands forth a gem of its own. 
No rival picture intermeddleth therewith. " It is worth a journey 
of a thousand miles," said a. distinguished traveler to me to-daj', 
"to see the Barranca Grande and the Regla Palisades." And I 
say " ditto " to Mr. Burke. 

We are back to Regla and off to Pachuca none too early, for it 
is four and one-fourth of the clock ere we leave our too-hospitable 
friends of the valley, and turn homeward our horses' heads and our 
own — well-turned these latter be already by what we have seen. It 
is dark at six, and the ride is five hours, and the country full of 
robbers. Dark falls on us before we reach Velasco — thick, soft, 
warm. We begin to climb the mountains and pass the lower en- 
trance of Real del Monte, when I get a bigger scare by far than 
that which frighted us near Omatuska. 



A SCARE, AND A RELIEF. • i6i 

I had just been talking with the builder of the Vera Cruz road. 
He had expressed fears of an attack, and as he had been long in 
the land, his fears were well grounded, at least to me. He had 
been describing how a French friend of his was lately cut to pieces 
on the hill we were soon to cross. So I was in an excellent con- 
dition for a fright. He had ridden ahead a rod or less, and was 
chatting Spanish with the conductor, Mr. Comargo. It was pitch- 
dark. Horsemen had been passing us quite frequently, lively with 
pulqui, and the bull-fight of the day. They were all in good fight- 
ing trim. Suddenly a number of them rode in among us, wheeled 
round their horses, and drove up to the conductor. I heard them 
speak his name. " It is come now, I am sure of it," I thought. 
These fellows are going to seize the conductor, and pistols and ri- 
fles will instantly flash and fire. As I had neither rifle nor pistol, 
I was not expected to take a very prominent part in the melee. I 
could see them dimly speak to the leader, and awaited the fire. It 
did not come. What does it mean? One second — ten — thirty 
elapsed, and no cry, no grapple, no shot. I turned to one of the 
escort at my side, and summoning up all the Spanish at my com- 
mand, I said, " Nosotros ombres ?" " Si, senor," was his calming 
reply, and the scare was over. They were gentlemen from Real 
del Monte, who had ridden down to escort us through the town. 
My escort, who said "Yes, sir," did "hot rebuke me for my bad 
Spanish. But when I got back to Mexico, and was telling the ad- 
venture to some Yankees, they laughed at my language, and said 
my question meant " We friends ?" instead of " Our friends ?" which 
I meant to say, and that I ought to have said, " Nuestros ombres ?" 

I insert this, so that if you are equally frightened you may be 
sure and be grammatical, otherwise your stay-at-home friends, who 
know just a bit more than you, and not your Spanish comrades, will 
be sure to make fun of you, even as those who never write a book 
or an article can cut up the grammar of those who do. Lindley 
Murray did not write Shakspeare, nor Goold Brown edit the Atlan- 
tic; but how much more they know about correct writing than mere 
geniuses ! 



l62 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Down hill, on the box with the driver, I go, for my friend, the gen- 
eral, begs the loan of my horse ; and, pitying his ill-luck with the for- 
mer steed, I relent and grant the second favor. The driver re- 
sponds to my American Spanish with a ceaseless "Si " — not " sigh," 
as you might properly suppose, but "see." Especially w'hen I say 
" Ablaro" (another blunder) " Espagnol muy mal" (" I speak Span- 
ish very bad"), you ought to have heard him put the emphasis on 
that "5z, senor." 

We wind around the gulfs of the mountain -side. A white rim 
about a black sea the road appears. Robberless, and now fear- 
less, we greet the lights of Pachuca, drive through its narrow 
streets, and, at nine and a half, ride under the fortified arches of 
the Casa Grande. 

The Old and the New accompany us even after we get within 
the safe and luxurious inclosure ; for I am no sooner seated at our 
ten-o'clock dinner than word comes that a couple await my pres- 
ence at a wedding, and the guests also. So the dinner is left half 
done, so far as the appetite goes, and the guard is followed to an 
English residence, that of the superintendent of the mines. Here 
we wait two hours for the arrival of the clerk of the city, who must 
be present to make the clerical work of any value. A supper of 
English tea, cheese, bread, and buns breaks that two hours in 
pieces, and half an hour after midnight the Cornwall }'Outh and 
maiden are duly and truly married by a Mexican officer of state 
and an American clergyman. So ended the day, when the clock 
struck one, and I struck the couch, satisfied with this full cup of 
the Old and the New. 

And now, having taken you over the ride, you may like, as prac- 
tical Yankees, to know what all this is for. You can not be much 
of a Yankee not to know. Look at that silver dollar ! Ah, I for- 
got ! You live in a country where the silver dollar is unknown. 
A country that pays off" its debts, has good credit everywhere, pays 
its employes regularly, soldiers and clerks and officers, and yet does 
not clink the silver. Here all is silver and bankruptcy. No cur- 
rency but coin, and no credit at home or abroad. General But- 



THE MOST SUCCESSFUL OPERATOR. ■ 163 

ler's argument for a paper currency based on the credit of the gov- 
ernment is the practice of America, whatever be its theory. Mexi- 
co has sent out three thousand millions of silver, and is still a sil- 
verless country. The Real del Monte mines, as all this group is 
called, have been known almost from the invasion of Cortez. 
They have been regularly and valuably worked for over a hundred 
and fifty years, though with some intermissions, caused by the wa- 
ter getting into the mines. 

The most successful operator was Pedro Terreras, a muleteer, 
who found a shaft about i762, worked it, and grew so rich that he 
gave Charles IV. of Spain two vessels of war, and promised him, 
if he would visit America and Regla, that he should never put foot 
on the New World, but only on the silver from his mines. He 
was made Count of Regla, and his family are still among the 
wealthiest Mexicans. The present yield of the mines is about 
four millions annually. 

We went into an " adit," or passage by which the tram-way drags 
out the ore. It is the Gautemozin mine, and properly named 
for the last Aztec emperor, who bravely but vainly sought to keep 
these riches from the European clutch. It is the richest in the 
country. A mile or so by mules, careful not to put out your arm 
and to get too lifted up in your head, and you come to a higher 
hole in the mountain, and a deeper one also. Here ladders de- 
scend for fifteen hundred feet. We take that for granted, climb 
a hundred feet, and see the steam-engine working in the bowels of 
the earth. I had heard that this was an English invention. I find 
it an American discovery. Here we see it growing. It looks 
strange, this fierce fire in the heart of the mountain, and some of 
our companions fear it as typical of the place we do not go up to. 

These engines everywhere are to draw off the water. They are 
run by Englishmen entirely. The ore comes up in long iron 
boxes, is dumped into carts, is divided off in bags, one in ten of 
which goes to the miner, besides six reals a day. The ore is worth 
about as much more ; a dollar and a half a day is quite a fair day's 
wages. They search every workman three times as he leaves the 



l64 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

mine, from hair to shoes. He has only two garments — a short lin- 
en jacket, and a pair of trowsers without pockets. These are care- 
fully shaken. His hat and slippers are pulled off, and equally 
searched. 

The ore does not look very lustrous, but yields about one hun- 
dred dollars to the tun. It is crushed, then washed in circular 
troughs by mules, then trodden out, as at Regla, with chemicals, 
then baked, then shipped to Mexico, where it goes through a half- 
dozen bakings and brewings and rollings and stampings before it 
gets into your pocket for a moment. The other minerals, zinc, 
copper, antimony, etc., give it more or less difficulty of reduction, 
but in a country where transportation is cheaper, and the markets 
nearer, would themselves be preserved, and made to pay in their 
own value the cost of reducing the richer minerals. 

But few of the mines are valuable, and though from three to four 
millions is the annual product, there are no dividends. The Real 
del Monte mines proper have not paid expenses within two hun- 
dred thousand dollars a year for the past ten years. Those of Pa- 
chuca do better, but do not do much. Many mines are worked 
at a loss. Much expense is necessary for drawing off the water. 
Miles and miles of " adits " run under the mountain. So that the 
vast receipts are swallowed up in the vaster expenditures. Yet 
they expect the costly works will be paid for, and then we wall all 
be changed from mule-driving Pedros to Counts of Regla. If it 
were not for hope, the heart would break, and silver-mining compa- 
nies also. They do in spite of hope, as more than one poor minis- 
ter has found, from Massachusetts to Minnesota. 

The conductor saj'S, " Do not invest your money in silver mines. 
A share or two, if you can lose it, may be well enough ; but it is a 
less certain crop than wheat." He is a good man to follow. Yet 
one success carries a thousand failures, and a millionaire a century 
ago will- make beggars of all the generations following, as they at- 
tempt to discover what he discovered without any attempt. Mot- 
to for silver mines : " Be content with what stock you have." 

Our ride to Pachuca was for veins of ecclesiastical silver, richer 



THE BEST INVESTMENT. , 165 

than all this ore. These we found, and were well repaid. Four 
churches already exist, the fruits of that trip and the subsequent 
faithful followings of better men. A lady from the States has 
opened a Spanish and an English school, and Pachuca bids fair to 
be the silver circuit of the Mexican Conference not many days 
hence. 

Invest in these operations. They are as Old as God and as 
New — from everlasting to everlasting. Put your money and your 
prayers into the soul silver mines, and you will lay up treasures in 
heaven, where no Mexican robbers nor thieves of worldliness ever 
break through or steal, and where you shall be receiving increas- 
ing and immeasurable interest on these human and earthly and 
present investments for ever and ever. 



1 66 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



VI. 

ACROSS LOTS. 

A drowsy Beginning. — Paradise somewhat Lost. — Trees of Paradise. — A lingual 
Guess at the Aztec Origin. — Tizayuca. — Zumpanfo. — The Lake System. — 
Guatitlan. — Hotel San Pedro. — Into Town. — Tree of Noche Triste. — Tacuba. 
— Aqueduct of San Cosme. — Tivoli. 

Do you want to know where I am writing this ? In bed, on my 
side, by the light of a candle, very dimly burning. Sitting on a 
bench, by its side, are a brass bowl and a brown pitcher. One 
chair is the only other piece of furniture besides the bed. It is the 
Hotel San Pedro, the chief hotel of the place. 

I had gotten so far when eyes and fingers gave out, and the can- 
dle followed. Nothing like tired nature to overcome disagreeable 
surroundings. The boy on the top of the mast can sleep as sound- 
ly as on a hay-mow, one of the best places ever got up for sleeping 
purposes. It only needs a sufficient degree of hunger to make 
any food palatable, and a sufficient degree of drowsiness to make 
any couch restful. The best bed I ever had was the planks that 
incline from the platform of the Jersey City depot to the floor of 
the dock. Getting off there about two in the morning, with a regi- 
ment of soldiers, we stretch ourselves on the floor for sleep. I 
was fortunate enough to get the slope that is a substitute for a step 
or two. The inclination was perfect, and I have often thought that 
was my bed of beds. I could get out a patent for a bed after that 
fashion which would do away with pillows, and, if one is sufficient- 
ly sleepy, with mattresses and other softnesses as well. 

I was going to describe my quarters at Guatitlan, when sleep \ 
came down for my deliverance and yours. So I will bring it in at 
the right place now, and begin at the beginning. 

We had done Pachuca — mines, rides, feastings, and worship. 



PARADISE SOMEWHAT LOST. - 167 

The time came for us to go. It always comes to blissful or painful 
sojourners. Four nights and three days had we traveled and chat- 
ted, and prayed and preached, and mingled all the good things of 
both lives happily together. " How to make the best of two Lives " 
is the title of a good book. One might answer, " Go to Mr. Comar- 
go's, the commandant of the mines at Pachuca, and spend a Sab- 
bath and two week-days in and about that romantic spot." Gen- 
eral Palmer had engaged a mule-team to take him and his Phil- 
adelphia - Paris compadre across the country. He generously 
offered me a seat in his " waggin," as they pronounce it here. 
You would never dream how it was spelled from that pronuncia- 
tion. I do not know now. It sounds like a corruption of our 
word wagon. 

The offer is gladly accepted, and we pass out of the narrow 
streets of the city of silver at about sunrise, into the paradise that 
incloses the town on its southern side. Paradise always looks a 
little more paradisiacal when at a distance than on closer inspec- 
tion. Shall we be disappointed in heaven ? Disappointed in get- 
ting there, I fear. As Dr. Watts said, "disappointed at three things : 
at seeing some there whom we did not expect to see, and not see- 
ing some that we did expect to see, and especially disappointed at 
seeing ourselves there." May this happy disappointment be ours, 
every one. 

Our Pachuca paradise is as green as it promises from the hill- 
top, looking down. The road runs amidst trees, a brown river with 
greenest banks. The favorite tree is called the Peru-tree, of slight 
green leaves, bearing a red berry in clusters ; not unlike in look to 
the checker-berry, as it is called in New England, but very unlike 
in taste, for this berry is puckery in the extreme. Yet birds like 
them, and so every thing has its uses. It makes a pretty ornament 
to the landscape, its varied colors making the fields into an aviary 
of cardinals — an appropriate effect for a papal land. The maguey 
flourishes in all its greenness, and very handsome it is in its sweep 
of leaf and depth of hue. The mountains rise on our left, near and 
dark and cool. The fields spread out, a level upland, limited by 



1 68 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

ranges near on the left and rear, remote on the front and right — a 
prairie of scores of square miles. 

We scamper over the plain in the brisk Septemberish morning, 
finding our shawls and capes no incumbrance. The land is very 
fertile, and quite generally cultivated. We pass haciendas where 
barley is being reaped and wheat sown, and all the offices of na- 
ture going on all the time. The chill morning air melts before the 
hot sun, and an August noon fits on to a fall sunrise. 

We breakfast at the snug little town of Tizayuca. The funniest 
thing about Mexico is the names of the towns. It is a sport that 
is jaw-cracking. It is the punishment the Aztecs inflicted upon 
the Spaniards, almost equal to any they suffered. As compared 
with the rich vocabulary of Spain, or the sounding words of more 
Northern tribes, they are horrid. They sound Chinese and Japa- 
nese, and are another of the hints toward the solution of the prob- 
lem as to where these races came from. Japanese junks now drift 
on to the western Mexican shore. This people look and act like 
those Asiatics. They are equally imitative, patient, subdued, in- 
dustrious. They have a likeness of language. Their habits are 
Asiatic. There is more indifference to propriety in these Aztec 
women than in any of the peasantry of Europe or Egypt. It is 
Eastern Asia that they reproduce. So their consonant names are 
a like production. All of which is respectfully submitted to the 
learned societies of Asia and America. 

Tizayuca, which brought on this excursus, seems incapable of 
bringing on any thing else. It slumbers like any American cross- 
roads at midday. Not a breath nor whisper, not a buzz nor a bite, 
except of invisible fleas and too-visible dogs. The church absorbs 
the town, which consists of one-story adobe huts, hidden among 
useless Peru-trees and more useless maguey. 

The breakfast was served from twelve to two, and was the best 
thing in the place, except the pleasant-voiced woman that served 
it, her pretty children, and the church aforesaid. It is surprising 
what good meals they get up in these out-of-the-way places. Beef- 
steak, thin -sliced fried potatoes, chicken -stews, and chocolate or 



ZUMPANGO. l6g 

coflfee of the best, make us long and lovingly remember Tizayuca. 
You can remember it by saying, " 'Tis a— favorite game of gam- 
blers or food of these natives." 

The power of the Castilian to manufacture derivatives was fun- 
nily shown by our hostess, who, when scolded at for her delay in 
bringing on the chocolate, responded, "Ahouta-ta-ta-ta-ta." "Ahou- 
ta " meant " immediately." Every added " ta " shortened the time. 
Could one have been made to say " quickly " in any prettier man- 
ner? It is a pleasant privilege, and makes the family and friendly 
diminutives very cordial and delightful. 

Ten miles, and Zumpango is reached. These miles go through 
a road but slightly traveled, and across fields susceptible of high 
culture. We cross the divide between Mexico and Pachuca, 
a hardly noticeable swell, and find ourselves in the rich valley 
of the capital. Zumpango is a pretty and lively town of five thou- 
sand souls. A noisy crowd of chanticleers are keeping up great 
disturbance. They prove to be some four hundred fighting-cocks, 
which are brought here for sale. " Elegant-looking birds," said 
one of my companions, who saw them. More elegant-looking now 
than when torn, bleeding, from each other's embrace. 

This place lies at the head of the lake system which imperils 
Mexico. Three lakes flow down upon that capital. The remotest 
one is that of Zumpango. It lies at the base of a range of mount- 
ains, and stretches along the rear of the town for several miles. 
Its hill-sides, opposite the town, look as if it would be a delightful 
winter resort for Northern people. It is over twenty feet higher 
than Mexico, and about thirty miles distant. To preserve it from 
inundating the city, a huge dike or wall, ten feet high, is built along 
its southern side. This dike is repeated more elaborately at the 
next lake, San Christoval ; and so the last lake, on whose edge 
the city sits, rarely rises above its proper level. Millions of dollars 
have been expended on these works, and they are yet unfinished. 
They need a drainage from the lowest lake into some river flow- 
ing down to the Gulf. This is projected, and will be accomplish- 
ed, " manana ?" 



lyo OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The ride from Zumpango to Gualitlan, where this story began, 
is very pretty. The haciendas grow frequent ; cattle fill the fields ; 
grains are being harvested ; and some fields, well irrigated, look 
wondrous green. The acres are lowly, and often wet. Great herds 
of cattle and horses are grazing in the drier meadows, while the 
huge snow -mountains rise higher than ever before from this half- 
watery base. Iztaccihuatl is more beautiful than from any other 
position. Both that and Popocatepetl are grand diamonds, flash- 
ing solid light in that sun-bright sky. What other fields of earth 
have such a guardianship ? 

As we enter the town, it seems certain that it must be an Amer- 
ican summer village. Trees line the roadside, lustrous in July 
verdure ; fields equally lovely lie behind the trees ; flowers blossom 
on the wayside. What better place possible to spend a night? 
Alas ! for the vanity of human expectations. The street is busy, 
and the two boys who are driving our mules, well loaded with pul- 
qui (the boys, not the mules), are greeted by another, more loaded, 
if possible, than they. He misdirected us ; but hung round for his 
medio, or half a real (six and a quarter cents), till the foot almost 
followed the voice in ejecting him. The Hotel San Pedro admits 
us to its ample yard, and that is about all. 

Not to disappoint you, when Rosecrans's railroad takes you to 
this hard-named city, let us take you now to its chief hotel. Imag- 
ine a square yard, three hundred feet across. Around it are one- 
story, low-roofed sheds of adobe. At its entrance is a small fonda, 
or restaurant. On its rear are some steps going up to a second- 
story veranda, low-browed and wide, on which are six small rooms, 
with brick floors and bare bedsteads, with a chair, a table, and a 
bench as their furniture. 

There are the quarters for fastidious guests, the first-class cars 
for unseasoned Yankees. They are remote from the house, if 
house that single room can be called which provides your meals 
alone ; and they are easily assailable by any body in the spacious 
yard, and there are many bodies there. A range of huge mule- 
wagons is backed along the rear of the yard, just under our balco- 



THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 



171 




TREE OF TRISTE NOCHE. 



ny, and morning reveals the muleteers sleeping soundly under their 
wagons. Their women find beds under the shed or under the can- 
vas of the wain. An Indian and his wife are stretched, asleep, on 
a common blanket, on the common ground, under the shed near the 
gate-way. So we have plenty of comrades inside the gates to rob 
us of our slumber and our watches. The watch we left at Mexico, 
fulfilling (this once) the command against putting on of gold and 
costly apparel ; and the slumber they left, undisturbed. " I both 
laid me down in peace and slept, and I awaked; for thou, O Lord, 
sustained me." David laid himself down and slept in a caravan- 
sary not unlike this. His condition, protection, and comfort are 
ours to-day. How true is it that our Lord is the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever ! 

The morning rays creep in at our doors. We are up and out 
and off. How splendid is the weather ! They never talk of the 



172 OCri? NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

weather here. It changes not. The sun comes exquisitely up 
over Guadalupe. The fields beneath the hills are very like the 
farms of the West, all except the mountains. Culture and comfort 
seem to nestle in these shaded retreats. The sierras of Toluca and 
Guadalupe come together in a narrow and not lofty pass, which 
our engineering associate is easily surmounting with his gauges 
and his trains. Over it, and we are in the Valley of Mexico. The 
city lies fifteen miles off, a garden of foliage being our ceaseless es- 
cort to its gates. We move moderately through village and town, 
examining churches, olive-groves, plazas, riding under broad-spread- 
ing branches, slowly wading through droves of burdened mules and 
asses, going to town with the " truck " of the country. 

The morning is delicious, and our spirits hardly less so. We 
could not help exclaiming, although it was not Mexican — inspired, 
doubtless, by the Massachusetts memories of Samuel Adams and 
Hancock, on the morn of the battle of Lexington, "What a glorious 
morning is this !" Yet they have them here all the time and all 
the day long ; although the peculiar preciousness of the Lexington 
morning is not yet fully transferred to this rare clime. 

Just before we reach Tacuba, a few miles from the city, a big old 
tree, walled in and inscribed, stands almost in the road-way. It is 
the tree under which Cortez collected the little remnant of his sol- 
diers in that " noche triste " (sad night), when they had been driv- 
en from the city by the uprising natives, determined to extirpate 
the invaders, avenge their gods, and save their country. It was a 
terrible night. None more terrible in the history of battles. The 
Indians had rushed upon them in the dark from boat and marsh 
and at the open crossings of the dike, until but a handful was left 
to tell the tale. These gathered here a moment on retreat to the 
victory which another year saw accomplished. 

It is a huge and gnarled cypress, with scant boughs and foliage 
— old then, and held in great veneration to-day by the Spaniards. 
How do the Mexicans regard it.'' If New England were to-day 
three-fourths British, and they were held in subjection, how would 
they regard the Lexington Monument ? But the natives are 



A BATTLE-GROUND. 



173 




GARDEN OF THE TIVOLI, SAN COSME. 



mounting to place and power ; and so the tree may be allowed to 
stand, like our battle monuments. A fire almost consumed it last 
year, and it is preserved with as great difficulty as the big tree on 
Boston Common. 

Tacuba is passed — not pretty in its high, inclosing walls, but 
lovely in its opening glimpses of gardens and groves. The Street 
of San Cosme is entered, and its solemn-looking aqueduct passed. 
This aqueduct, built after the " high Roman fashion," on stately 
arches, rises gray and black and moist. Its sides drip with cool- 
ness, and are flecked with mosses, grasses, and tiny shrubs. It 
seems a projection of Antechristian times into the bustling pres- 
ent. Along these arches fought the men of Scott against the men 
of Santa Anna, inch by inch, to the plaza and the palace. Along 



174 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

them now the horse-car flies, the ass tugs under his big and bulky 
burden, the peon toils under his relatively bigger and more bulky 
loads. The whole broad avenue is full of life, while by its side 
stalks the majestic aqueduct, a Roman legion slow marching into 
Rome. It is as artistic a line of beauty as ever strode along a 
^ busy city pathway. It brings the Chapultepec waters to the town, 
an old-fashioned water-way, but far grander than our modern coun- 
terpart of hidden pipes and siphons. 

The Tivoli gardens open on this avenue, and just below the ter- 
minus of the aqueduct. There we pause for a breakfast, amidst 
foliage, birds, and summer delights. This is a favorite resort for 
out-of-door dinner-parties, and has every conceit for such tastes — 
bowers, boxes, and even tables up in the trees. We can there eat, 
and chatter like and with the birds. That is high living, at not 
very high prices. Try it when you go to Mexico. The few decid- 
uous trees are putting forth fresh foliage, and every thing is lovely. 
How lovely ! Oh, that grace and goodness kept step with nature ! 
Where do they ? In you ? 

The perilous journey of sixty to seventy miles is passed without 
peril, and a new and pleasant chapter added to the book of expe- 
rience. 



WE SET OUT FOR PUEBLA. 



175 



VII. 

THE TO WN OF THE ANGELS. 

Warnings unheeded. — Slow Progress. — Christ in the Inn. — Why Angelic. — Bad 
Faith and worse Works.— First English Service. — Outlook from the Cathe- 
dral. — Tlascala. — The Volcano. — Inside View of the Belfry. — Inside the Ca- 
thedral. — Triple Gilt. — Cathedral Service. — La Destruccion de los Protes- 
tantes. 

When Cortez was told he must not go in a certain direction 
or to a certain place, he always went straight thus and there. His 
success was in no small measure due to that quality of his nature. 
When he came to the wall of Tlascala he went through its gates, 
not around it. His battles with the Tlascalans assured his success 
with their Aztec foes. So when they told him he must not go to 
Cholula, since the priestly city was too cunning for him, into it he 
marched. 

If when in Rome one must do as the Romans do, in Mexico 
it is worldly-wise to follow the footsteps of Cortez. Puebla had 
been held up as an especial object of fear. " It is very fanatical," 
they said. " It got up a riot, and drove out the Protestants three 
years ago. It is a city of priests, and the sacred city of Mexico. 
Keep away." So we went to Puebla, Where should a clergyman 
go but to the city of clericos ? Where an angel of the churches but 
to " The Town of the Angels," as it is always called ? 

It was Friday, the 7th of February, that two of us essayed to take 
the eleven o'clock train for a ride thither of about one hundred 
and twenty miles. The time had been changed to twelve, and we 
occupied it in lounging through a park adjoining the station, which 
has swings, dance-sheds, a little amphitheatre for gymnasts and 
theatrical performances, and a level tract of open prairie, edged 
with trees. This is a great Sunday resort, and is then busy with 



1^6 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

dancers, drinkers, and dissipaters of every sort. To-day it is as 
empty as a Protestant church on week-days. A sluggish canal 
girds it, covered thick with green scum, which, but for the height 
of the land, would breed a deadly miasma. As it is, the tropical 
vegetation goes on harmlessly, and, once used to the sight of it, 
not disagreeably. 

Twelve comes, and a pulqui train also. Said train is a heavy 
line of freight cars, two stories high, with barrels of the detestable 
drunk-drink of the country piled close in each compartment. The 
company makes its chief profits out of this business, and so every 
body and every train have to give way to its demands. 

We wait till three before we start, tacked on to these empty pul- 
qui cars. The engine gives out, and leaves us forty miles out, it- 
self or its engineer overcome with pulqui. Delay follows delay, as 
one sin breeds another, until it is after four in the morning ere we 
reach Puebla, where we should have been at seven the previous 
evening. The cars are not made for night travel, nor our clothes. 
The night is cool, and our capes are light; the windows of the cars 
will not stay up, and, all open to their uttermost, let in the sharp 
air of the snow mountains. We shiver, and seek to sleep. The 
earth shivers too, either in sympathy or from some other cause, and 
quite a quaking occurs at three o'clock, sufficient to send the peo- 
ple of Puebla otit of their beds and chambers. Our shakes from 
cold were so great as to make us insensible to the responsive shiv- 
erings of the earth. At five we get to our hotel, and under blank- 
ets, and into warmth and sleep. 

Puebla lies on the opposite side of the snow range from Mexico. 
Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl are west of us here, east there. They 
are closer here, it being only about half the distance, or thirty miles, 
to the chief of these from this city, while that Popo, etc., is sixty 
miles from Mexico. 

Our hotel was once a college or theological school, and has over 
the graceful iron gate-way that opens on the second, and properly 
hotel balcony, the unusual initials, " I. H. S." — unusual for an inn. 
"Jesus, the Saviour of men," has at last found his name over the 



THE PIOUS INSCRIPTION. 



177 




STREET VIEW IN PUEBLA. 

gate-way of the public-house from which He was driven before He 
was born, and into which He has never found official entrance 
since. When I first saw this gracefully -wrought monogram, on 
my way to Mexico, over this portal, my heart rejoiced at this rare 
expression of piety in a tavern. The rejoicing disappeared when 
I was told that it had been part of a convent, and that was why 
the sacred letters were here. I found that even Roman Catholics, 
who put the cross upon every thing, from the bells of the don- 
keys to the pulqui plant (for you will often see a cross in a pulqui 
field, two white bits of straw in this shape stuck in the edge of a 
leaf, that it may be blessed with fruitfulness) have never yet pre- 
sumed to erect this sign upon a tavern. It only got in here by a 
change of use. Having got in surreptitiously, may it stay in, in 
spirit as well as letter ! That it is likely so to do will be seen fur- 
ther on. 



178 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The balcony on which we rest incloses an open court, and is 
wide, high, shaded, and enjoyable — very. It was a school or col- 
lege in what devout Romanists feel were the good old days of con- 
vent and Church power, and therefore has a learned air about it 
even in its transformation. A sleep till late in the morning, a 
breakfast as good as the sleep, and we sally forth to take the town. 
That is not so easy a matter to do, for this town is the seat of the 
Church power of Mexico. And it happened on this wise : 

When Cortez invaded the country, he found Cholula the sacred 
city. There were the chief priests, and the chief temples, and the 
chief gods. A population that he put at three hundred thousand 
thronged its mud-walled streets, and beggars by the myriad made 
it look like old Spain. 

After the reduction of the country it was thought wise, in that 
wisdom which has always characterized the Roman Church, to get 
up a Christian city over against the heathen metropolis. So Pue- 
bla, or " The Town," was founded six miles from Cholula, and its 
walls were said to have been erected amidst the singing of angels, 
an improvement on Thebes of old, which only had Orpheus to 
harp up its walls. As a proof that this was actually the case, the 
full name of the town is Puebla of the Angels, "I^uebla de los An- 
gelas.^'' Is not that proof positive ? Q. E. D. 

Such a town, of course, is religious. It is nothing else. It was 
built for religion. It has been sustained these three hundred and 
fifty years on religion. Its churches are grander than those of 
Mexico, its convents and ecclesiastical institutions relatively far 
more numerous and wealthy. Of the twenty-five millions of its 
valuation a few years ago, twenty millions was the share which the 
Church possessed, almost a complete reversal of the tithe principle 
— four-fifths to the priest and one to the people. Then a gold and 
silver chandelier hung in its cathedral, and these materials were 
more common than brass. They were nothing reckoned of in 
those days of priestly glory, the Solomonic reign of this Church. 
The chandelier is gone — at least I did not see it — and the cathe- 
dral is shorn of much of its gold and its glory. 



PUEBLA FAITHFUL TO THE CHURCH. 



179 




UU D1l_ 






4"^ itllW yHPrr FTiT 



OHFTiiilT-r H iiniri 







RUINS OF THE COVERED WAY TO 
THE INQUISITION. 



Such X i^, 1 It^ 
so owned, so occupied, 
would naturally be 
faithful to the Church. 
It could not well be 
otherwise. All its peo- 
ple get their living, as 
did Demetrius of Eph- 
esus, by making silver 
shrines and such like for their goddess Maria. Their devotion 
was as great as their interests were close. They must approve 
and defend the Church in which they lived and moved and had 
their daily being. They must oppose all beginnings of opposition 
to her, whether local or national. So they cast themselves into the 
breach, and in the war upon the Church have always been found 
in the front rank of her defenders. This city has been the seat 
of her power. Mexico, a political capital far more than a relig- 
ious, has been indifferent to the fate of Romanism. Puebla, 
which is nothing if not religious, has been indifferent to every thing 
but Romanism. 

Of course such a stronghold of that order was not considered 
fruitful soil for anti- Romanism. "Very fanatical," every body 



l8o OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

says, "is Puebla." It has proved this faith by its works. Among 
its residents is Mr. Blumenkron, a Jew, born in Philadelphia, raised 
in Europe, but a citizen of Mexico these twenty-five years — a Jew 
more outwardly than inwardly, a gentleman of pluck and persist- 
ence. In the breaking up of their convents he secured a slice of 
the Santo Domingo for himself, the Convent of the Inquisition. 
He also bought a church. This last he offered to the evangelists. 

Rev. Gabriel Ponce de Leon came down from Mexico to preach 
in it. The people rose upon him, three thousand strong, rushed 
into the little church, hurled stones at his head and those of his as- 
sociates, who fled upon the roof, and from roof to roof, and so es- 
caped out of their murderous power. I have never heard that the 
grave and gentlemanly Bishop of Puebla ever publicly disapproved 
of these proceedings, or that the less grave, though not less gentle- 
manly, Archbishop of Mexico ever censured the Bishop of Puebla 
for not condemning the conduct of his own church members. I 
fear that when, the next Sunday, he and these rioters repeated the 
Litany with exceeding warmth and fullness of response, they did 
not pause at that prayer, " From battle, and murder, and sudden 
death, good Lord, deliver us," and think how earnest they had been 
the Sabbath before to inflict murder and sudden death upon an in- 
nocent preacher of the Gospel of the blessed God. When will the 
Protestants become like bloody murderers of those who oppose 
them? Have they not been so in some of their branches? "Let 
him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." 

That riot made the few English residents timid, and, though we 
went to the houses of two English families, we could not get either 
of them to open their doors to an English service. Disappointed, 
we returned to the hotel. After dinner an American gentleman, 
Dr. Tinker, spoke to us ; we told him our failure. He said we 
could hold a meeting in the hotel. It was doubted. He imme- 
diately applied to the landlord, who instantly offered his best and 
biggest room, and thei-e, at three on Sabbath afternoon, just seven 
persons assembled, including the two ministers, and service was 
held — praise, prayer, and preaching. It was a goodly season, and 



THE STREETS OF PUEBLA. i8i 

one long to be remembered. May all who attended it be found 
in that perfect congregation of which this number was the perfect 
though petite unit : seven, the beginning, a multitude that no man 
can number, the consummation. 

The Town of the Angels is beautiful, and, what is rare in the cit- 
ies of men, exceedingly clean. It lies foursquare. Its streets are 
paved in broad blocks, which look as if washed daily, so lustrously 
they shine in this burning sun. They are wide enough, the streets 
as well as the pavements ; the passion for broad thoroughfares de- 
clining as you enter regions where the rays of the sun must be well 
mixed with shadow to make them endurable. 

Most of the streets are raised at the crossings on each side of a 
narrow channel that runs through their centre under a single broad 
flat stone, which channel lets the torrents in the rainy season flow 
to the river without disturbance of travel. It is an improvement 
on the stone blocks put in the Baltimore crossings for like pur- 
poses. The then clean streets are washed by rivulets from Iztac- 
cihuatl, which seems to lie right over our heads, though thirty 
miles away. How superbly sleeps that snow range above this 
green meadow and gray town ! Were it not too sad a reflection, 
one might fancy it a body shrouded and laid in state on that high 
catafalque, ten thousand feet above our eyes. 

The straight streets terminate in green groves or brown hills, 
which look as if they were gates, so close they meet the eye in this 
bright air. They give a very pleasant effect to the vista that opens 
to you whichever way you gaze. The streets stretch no little dis- 
tance before these green and brown gayeties are reached, for there 
are sixty thousand people in this basin, and these are not packed 
closely together. 

Let us climb the cathedral tower, and take in the whole specta- 
cle. The outlook is both lovely and grand. The city diminishes 
from this height, but its environs make up for its loss. The fields 
are better cultivated than those about Mexico, or, rather, are more 
open and more farm-like, those of the latter being devoted to trees 
and towns. They are very green and attractive. Irrigation is 



t82 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




THE CATHEDRAL OF PUEBLA. 



easy, as the mountains near by keep the streams from becoming 
dry. The hills to the east go down to the Gulf. Orizaba's white 
dome flashes among them, the most perfect and most dazzling pyr- 
amid that nature has tossed up into the sky for the envy and the 
despair of ambitious mortals. What is Cheops's gray hill to this 
polished marble glory? How petty even Emerson's lines sound 

here : 

" Morning opes with haste her lids, 

To gaze upon the Pyramids." 

What cares morning for that five hundred feet high of matched 
granite? As much as the proudest statesman for the infant's 
house of cards or blocks. It is a pretty specimen of childish inge- 
nuity, and that is all. Nature in every line leaves art as matchless 
as God leaves man. She is its offspring, and what are our petty 
imitations to His creations? No. Morning sees Orizaba and 
Blanc and their co-creations not only long before, but with far 



THE ALLIES OF CORTEZ. 183 

deeper emotions than it looks on our feeble products, even such as 
may seem very grand when compared with our meanest efforts. 

To the north of east rises Malinche, brown and green to its sum- 
mit, and sometimes white there also, and red even, and black, 
when the smoke and fires of the volcano mix their colors with its 
snows and sides. This was named by Cortez for his Marina ; 
his Indian interpreter, and himself also, being known to the Indian 
allies and foes by the name of Malinche. It is the only one of the 
volcanoes that lost its old Indian name. The three grander ones 
preserved their original titles while they changed owners. It lies 
nearest Puebla, and looks not five miles off, though it will be twen- 
ty ere you reach its base, if you gallop from this plaza. 

Farther to the north, and trenching a little on the west, is a 
range of whitened cliffs, 'without any vegetation seemingly, at this 
distance, or possibility of any. These scarred bluffs, that look as 
if made of salt, are TIascala, the next most famous spot in Mexico 
to Mexico herself For there was the little republic of mountain- 
eers that never submitted to the Aztec yoke ; whom Cortez first 
conquered, and who never failed to be his allies afterward; on 
whom he relied to carry him through all his perils, and to whom 
he gave his banner, that still hangs in the church of the town ; to 
whom also he gave political liberties that have never been taken 
away. A railroad station is not three miles from their city, called 
by the name of the pluckiest, worst, and best specimen of the Mex- 
ican of to-day — Santa Anna, So closely is Cortez linked to this 
present. 

It was from that hill fortress that he marched on Cholula be- 
cause they told him not to ; so his line of march is visible to the 
eye from this tower. Across these low spurs of these inclosing 
mountains his band of less than four hundred footmen, and a score 
or two of horsemen, moved slowly upon the priestly town, confident 
in their arms, their horses, their faith, their leader, and themselves 
— a five-fold cord which was not easily broken, though often at- 
tempted in the terrible strain of the eighteen months which fol- 
lowed. 



1 84 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

One feels a growing respect for that general as he stands among 
these scenes of his career, even if one American traveler has sought 
to belittle his achievements, and to make his conquest of the Az- 
tecs a mere brush of trained troops with untrained savages. Our 
trained troops had many years of hard service ere they rooted out 
the untrained savages of Florida, and have not yet subdued those 
of the West. But this general in a year and a half brought these 
organized and warlike Aztecs into such submission that they have 
never raised their heads in rebellion since. And they are vastly 
superior in every respect, military included, to the Indians of our 
frontier. They are the soldiers of the republic, and can fight as 
well as the soldiers of France, as they showed in this very Puebla, 
where they won one of their brilliant battles against their invad- 
ers, and made the 5th of May famous in their annals. It was 
something to subdue such a people. 

Turn now due west, and fill your gaze with the grand Snow 
Range. It is all embraced at a glance. Unlike the Alps, which 
you can never see around, these Mexic Alps are all compassed at 
once. You can see where, they leave the plains, and where they 
come back to them. You can ride clear around them if you please. 
From the first breaking of the soil on the east, between Malinche 
and Tlascala, 5'ou go gradually up to Iztaccihuatl, descend enough 
to allow a pass across to Mexico — the pass which Cortez and Scott 
crossed — climb again the steeper, taller, smoother, and handsomer 
sides of Popocatepetl, and " coast " down his western side into the 
valleys and lakes that come between him and the Toluca range, of 
which Ajusca is the chief peak — a range that shuts in Mexico city 
on the south. 

I leave you looking at this complete picture while I look at this 
grand bell and its half-dozen smaller sisters ; for the clock is about 
to strike. Three times a power below pulls back that huge copper 
hammer before it lets it fall on the huger rim, to send forth a thun- 
derous tone that makes us look to our ears, and almost fear that 
we shall have no further use for these rudimental wings, as Mr. 
Darwin might call them, did he choose to detect in man a descent 



A LOOK AT THE CATHEDRAL. ■ 185 

from angels rather than from apes. The power that slowly and 
thricely swings the hammer ere it strikes the blow, seems so labored 
and so human that we are sure it must be man. It is so, we find, 
but man changed into a machine — oiled, and burnished, and oper- 
ating like clock-work exactly. 

You will notice here the number of the churches. Though 
French cannon have blown some of them to pieces, and Mexican 
changes have opened streets through others, still the domes and 
turrets are very numerous, much more so than the needs of the 
city. Chief of these are the Campana, or Jesuits' church, and the 
San Francisco, which stands near the eastern gate, over against the 
Alameda, with its paved court along the street-side, covering an 
acre or more ; its deep arcades once used for priestly refreshment, 
now as barracks for soldiers ; and its tall, square, ungainly towers, 
that look as if they could stand many an earthquake and bombard- 
■ment, as they have already done for a hundred years and more. 
They all have one model : a dome over the centre of the cross, and 
two towers at the front or long end of the cross. That is the mod- 
el of the Mexican church ; no pinnacle, no shaft, no Gothic arch — 
Moorish and Spanish, and that only. 

Descend and look at this cathedral. It stands, four feet above 
the street, on a raised pavement that is of vast proportions. It is 
not less than three hundred feet before you reach the church from 
the beginning of this rock-built terrace. The effect is very majes- 
tic. A plaza spreads beyond this outside church floor, with a gar- 
den and flowers, surrounded by a street, and inclosed by a very 
wide and shaded arcade, filled with curiosity seekers and sellers. 

The side wall of the church rises vast, almost windowless and 
pillarless, a naked wall of dark gray rock. Enter. The effect is 
grand and profound ; more so, I think, than in any edifice I have 
seen on this continent, and surpassed by but few on the other. 
The towers rise in grand proportions, and the bells drop down the 
richest fruit of melody. Its pillars are of the same dark porphy- 
ritic rock, but are built up in stones about two feet in width, laid in 
white cement, which relieves the pillars by regular lines of light. 



i86 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



These vast columns, ninety feet high, support a vaster roof, that 
seems almost aerial in its height and grace. The springing arches 
bend like a hand of heaven, each ridge a finger, above the prostrate 
worshipers. The altar is of polished pillars of marble, with each 
groove edged with gold plate. The effect is very brilliant, the play 
of gold on the variegated marbles being strange and striking. One 
could hardly tell if they were not all gold. Inside these flashing 




CONVENT OF SAN DOMINGO, CITY OF MEXICO. 

columns is a mass of polished green and almost translucent mar- 
ble, and above and around it hang all manner of images: popes 
and ecclesiastics, angels and apostles, and, over all, Mar}-, God 
blessed forever in this ornate idolatry. 

The chapel in the rear of the high altar is a mass of gilded and 
graven images, as are all the chapels in the chief churches in all 
the cities. None is more resplendent than one in the old Church 



A GHASTLY DISCOVERY. 187 

of Santo Domingo near at hand. Every crevice of the large chapel 
is covered with carved wood, tossed up into airy forms like the fili- 
gree work of a gold setting, and every bit of this carved wood or 
clay, on roof, wall, side, and every spot but the floor, is covered 
with gilding. It is a little antique, but when, first opened it must 
have .well - nigh blinded the eyes of the worshipers. So yet are 
some of the chapels of the cathedral in Mexico. One can but feel, 
as he looks on all this display, the fitness of one of Hood's puns : 

" Just like a button is his soul, 
All cased in triple g(u)ilt." 

This church, in its service and its life, its doctrines and devices, is 
very like these gorgeous gildings, 

"All cased in triple g(u)ilt." 

That Santo Domingo is a specimen. Come with me out of that 
dazzling chapel into this corridor of the convent to which that 
chapel is attached. Here was another like glittering room, where 
a rich Pueblano paid four hundred dollars to have his body rest 
a night on its way to the grave. Back of this gorgeous prelimina- 
ry to the sepulchre and the worms, you see this closed-up hole in 
the wall. Knock it open. There is a room there, if room it may 
be called, where two or three can crouch, and none can walk or 
hardly stand, with a stone bench, and a hole big enough to pass a 
piece of bread through. In that wall were confined, those suspect- 
ed by the friars of St. Dominic, who said mass so ornately in that 
golden chapel. Here they were fed, and here, when the order 
came, food ceased to come, and they ceased to live. Buried with 
Christ were these his saints — buried alive. 

Close by that living tomb a hole was broken in the wall, and out 
of it rattled a heap of skulls and other human bones, which had 
been tossed into a vault at an opening above, and which bottom 
of the vault was thus opened to the light, and all their deeds be- 
came manifest that they were wrought of the devil and not of God. 

This Convent of the Inquisition was located in the very heart 



l88 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

of the city. The stone whence the town radiates is opposite its 
entrance. A new street was cut through it, and a portion of it, in- 
cluding that place of sepulture and revelation, has been purchased 
by the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
That is a sweet and sacred revenge, and the martyrs will feel that 
their sufferings are truly avenged, when the place of their living 
burial becomes the seat of a living Church, preaching the faith for 
which they suffered even unto the death. 




PRISONERS OF THE INQUISITION. 

The service ai the cathedral Sunday morning seemed dry and 
husky. The robes of the officiators were faded, the young preach- 
er was afraid, and the singing as hollow as if performed in some 
non-Roman churches I wot of in Boston and New York. But the 
evening service, which the bishop conducted, w^as intense enough. 
It showed how fervid yet was the faith of Puebla, and how easily it 
might burst into a volcano of persecution. The audience was not 
over four or five hundred, but they gathered round the pulpit on 
their knees, and repeated the Litany as I never heard it before 
— so intense, so united, so devotional. The tents and altars of |{ 
camp-meetings do not surpass them in earnestness of response. 



A SABBATH-NIGHT ENTERTAINMENT. 189 

Some of their utterances were so powerful that my companion 
asserted that the organ accompanied them. This I denied, and 
though we both sat directly under that instrument, it is a dis- 
puted point between us to this day whether there was any sound 
but the human voice, I heard none but that was full of deepest 
and strongest and most united exclamation. Puebla is very re- 
ligious, as was Athens, and very superstitious, and worships the un- 
known God with a devotion worthy a clearer faith. May it soon 
attain this needed grace ! 

It is likely so to do. The brisk business men begin to see that 
it needs closer relations with the outside world. It was left thirty 
miles off the track when the road from. Vera Cruz to Mexico-was 
laid out, though it was offered direct connection if it would build 
that thirty miles. Its refusal to make this investment is charged 
to its priesthood, and that does not make them any the more pop- 
ular. It will make connections with other routes, and regain some 
of the trade it is losing. This ambition makes it more willing to 
tolerate all faiths, and to adjust itself to the future of Mexico. Still 
that toleration in this town will be slowest of the slow. Persecu- 
tion must precede such liberty. 

That Sabbath night the crowds in the Alameda showed little 
thought of the bitter wailing of the cathedral company. A multi- 
tude in carriages, on horseback, and afoot, thoughtless, fashion-fol- 
lowing, were without God, if not without hope in the world. The 
golden glory on the snowy brows of the mountains — was it a sign 
of a new advent that should make the Sabbath a delight, holy unto 
the Lord, honorable ? 

There is a cross to be taken here by the saints of the Lord ere 
that grace dawns. On the show-bills, at the entertainment for the 
next Sabbath night at the Theatre Hidalgo, was a play entitled 
" The Destruction of the Protestants " {La Destruccio7i de los Pro- 
testantes). I do not know but that I would have overcome two 
scruples, visiting the theatre and breaking the Sabbath, had I been 
there that Sunday, in order to have seen of what spirit some of the 
Pueblanos yet are, and how they would have received the portrayal 



igo OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

of a Saint Bartholomew's day. The two scruples have been over- 
come once and again, though not at the same time, since I have 
visited a theatre, for religious purposes, on Sunday, and have wit- 
nessed Sunday-school exhibitions which imitated the theatre in ev- 
ery thing but artistic excellence and success. 

That this was a sort of Sunday-school exhibition was clear, from 
the fact that that Sunday night the play was to be " Samson." 
So even in their sports the angels of Puebla are pious. Probably 
their Sunday bull-fights are with the sacred bulls, such as Eg}?pt 
once worshiped ; not those of the pope — these they never fight. 

That play shows what their earnestness yet is, and what Protest- 
ants may have to suffer ere the city is truly redeemed to Christ. 
Yet they are willing to suffer. Twelve brethren and sisters gath- 
ered round their beloved minister when the storm broke over him 
of pistols and paving -stones. Sixty gathered to hear the Word. 
They will come together again. The government must protect 
liberty of worship, and Puebla be indeed, in heart as well as in 
name, the City of the Angels ; religious with a happy religion that 
does not wail with ceaseless confession, Mea culpa, mea maxi?na 
culpa, " My fault, my greatest fault," but exclaims in joyful confi- 
dence, 

"My God is reconciled ; 

His pard'ning voice I hear ; 

He owns me for his child, 
I can no longer fear. 

With confidence I now draw nigh, 

And Father, Abba, Father, cry." 

May that soon be the blessed experience of this City of the 
Saints and the Angels ! 



A START ON HORSEBACK. 



191 



VIII. 

THE MOST ANCIENT AMERICAN MECCA. 

On Horse. — Irrigation. — Entrance to Cholula. — Deserted Churches. — Plaza 
Grande, and its Cortez Horror. — A wide-awake Priest. — A wide View from 
the Summit. — A costly Trifle. — The Ride back. 

PuEBLA is a modern and made-up Mecca, an imitation, and not 
an original. Let us to the true. Horseback is your only mode 
of riding here, and the horse is made for the business. In the 
States you run small chance of getting trained steeds for such 
service. Here you find none else. In Mexico city are fancy 
teams, but even there the back is the favorite part of the horse. 
Especially is it so everywhere else. 

Mr. Marshall, an American Englishman, whose two sons were 
educated at Lowell and Chicago, furnishes us with horses, four in 
all. A gentleman and his wife accompany us, with the guide, 
an old gentleman, whose pantaloons, like Mr. Grimes, the ancient's, 
coat, are all buttoned down, though not before, but on the side, 
silver buttons too, and as thick together as it is possible to place 
them. Some of these garments, it is said he has, worth five hun- 
dred dollars. It would better pay his wife to wear the breeches 
than in ordinary cases of uxurious usurpation. His horse was as 
much thought of as his pantaloons, and the one danced and the 
other shone, and warmed the cockles of the old man's heart, so 
that he sang love -songs with a voice approaching the childish 
treble and a sentiment equally infantile or senile. 

The morning was m.agnificent, as all mornings are here, when 
this company of ten galloped through the yet empty streets of 
Puebla. The country is soon reached, and the volcanoes rise up 
before us as only a mile or two away. How grand they glowed in 



1^2 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

that coming sun ! The new paseo is paced, a pretty park and 

drive, whose trees were leveled to let the Frenth balls in and the 

Mexican out. The road runs straight to the pyramid of Cholula, 

which looks as if it hugged the base of Popocatepetl, though it is 

twenty-five miles therefrom. 

Irrigation makes the fields green ; not here, as' Bryant found it 

in Berkshire, where he wrote his " Thanatopsis," and where he 

says are 

" The complaining brooks 

That make the meadows green." 

There is no complaining in these brooks, albeit they do " a heap " 
more business than those that make " a heap " more of complaint, 
as is the case upward through beast to man. The howling cat 
catches no mice, and the brawling woman that Solomon was so 
afraid of, and to whom in his establishment he was able to give 
a wide house, is not the one he describes in the last verses of 
his Proverbs. So this land is changed from a brown and barren 
desolation into beauty and abundance by trickling a few inches 
of water along a shovel-wide path. That is all. It is the little 
that makes the muckle here and elsewhere, in this and in every 
thing. 

A ride of an hour and a half brings us to the mud-brick huts 
that begin the once magnificent city of Cholula. I fear the huts 
were about the same sort when the city was at the height of its 
magnificence. The pepper, or Peru, tree grows thickly and use- 
lessly, except to the eye and the birds — the redness of its beny 
pleasing our vision, and its bitter pungency their taste. The ma- 
guey grows yet finer to the eye and yet worse to the taste. It 
stretches out superbly over these black and level fields. No won- 
der the dwellings are of dirt, where pulqui and pepper are the 
chief products of the soil. 

We cross a spur of the pyramid, but leave its exploration till the 
end of our trip. That spur through which the road is cut reveals 
the artificial nature of the mound, for its layers of thin brick and 
thick mud are visible on either side of the road, and far up on the 



A MASSACRE BY CORTEZ. ' 1^3 

chief side to where the strata are lost in the trees and brush that 
grow upon them. 

On this rising edge of the mound you note the number and size 
of the churches that once replaced in this now deserted city the old 
idolatry with the new. Churches are everywhere and of every size, 
hidden away among the trees, standing out to view in the plaza, 
and on the hill slopes surrounding the town. There is about one 
apiece for every family, if not for every soul; though in this latter 
list, if dogs were included — and John Wesley hints that they may 
be — the churches may not be too numerous, even now. All church 
and no people seems to be the present character of the town. 

This was either a proof that the town had left the churches, or 
that Cortez and his successors were not content alone with build- 
ing Puebla, or with having the angels do it, but thought it good 
policy to fill the old Aztec andToltec city with their new gods. 
Whatever prompted them, the fact remains — and it is about all 
that does remain — that domes and towers rise everywhere in open 
fields, and pastures without inhabitant. I doubt if such a sort of 
desolation exists elsewhere on the earth. 

We drive a short distance along a line of adobe huts, a single 
story high, and mostly opening on the street, sometimes used as 
little shops and stores, and sometimes containing a whole and not 
a small family in a single squalid room. The opposite side is a 
part of the inclosure of a gigantic church. A few moments and 
the Plaza Grande opens on us, as large as that of Mexico, but void 
of gardens, foliage, and folks, in all of which that place abounds. 

Here or hereabouts occurred the crudest massacre of all that 
marked the march of Cortez. The cunning, priestly city welcomed 
him timidly, but with seeming cordiality. Forced by the superior 
warlike nature of the Mexican rulers, the officials plotted a sur- 
prise, making pits in the streets for his horses, and arranging the 
house roofs for assault. Malinche learned the secret through a 
wife of a cazique, and revealed it to Cortez. He had the plaza 
filled with the authorities and thousands of packmen, to see and 
help him off; and on just such a calm, sweet, glorious morning as 



194 ^^^ NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

this, poured his musketry and cannon upon the harmless, helpless 
mass, slaughtering them by the thousands. Cannon also com- 
manded the approaches to the place, and swept down all the ex- 
cited masses that attempted to enter and rescue their brethren. 
That deed gave him free egress from this city and free ingress to 
Mexico ; for it inspired the country with great fear of these invad- 
ers, who could learn every secret and master every opposition. 

The plaza gives no sign of this terrible history. Two sides of 
it are occupied with churches, one with small shops and stores, and 
one with a long, wide, handsome arcade, as empty of people, how- 
ever, as a handsome head usually is of sense. A few Indian wom- 
en, descendants of the poor fellows who were here done unto the 
death, sit on their mats among their beans, bananas, oranges, wa- 
ter-melons, and other summer fruits, and do a little trading for the 
little town. 

A high wall incloses the immense area assigned to the great 
church, which fills all the eastern side of the plaza and goes back 
for several acres, an empty court and church and convent, except 
a corner occupied by soldiers. The smaller church on the north 
side was erected by Cortez, so it is said, and contains the little im- 
age of the Virgin which he carried in all his campaigns. It is a 
small church, and not rich in any of its trappings. I did not know 
that the Cortez's Virgin was there, and so, if I saw it, saw it not. 
It shows the tact of this general, that he should put his battle ban- 
ner in charge of the fighting Tlascalans, and his worshiped image 
in charge of the praying Cholulans. Siciim aiique. Each had its 
own, and the country saw, Spanish and Mexic, the fitness of the 
appropriation. 

A ride through one of the half-dozen occupied streets, and that 
but poorly inhabited, carries us by the door of an exceedingly fresh 
and pretty chapel. It is flush to the sidewalk, and brilliant with 
all manner of stucco and fancy-colored washes. It is not paint, 
but water-colors, that here set off the houses. Puebla is being 
thus rewashed under orders of the governor, who declares if each 
house is not thus refreshened within a certain time he will make the 



A SERVICE AT CHOLULA. 



195 




CHURCH BUILT BY CORXEZ. 



owner pay a fine and the 
expenses of its recoloring. 
So that city is busy in 
rewashing its walls in. all 
manner of pretty stripes 
and tints, almost the only 
business in which it is very 
active^ though it is not es- 
pecially dull. Such wash- 
es hold several years, and 
are a cheap and pretty 
way of dressing up a town. 

Service is going on in 
this only renewed church 
of Cholula. We dismount 
and enter. It is exceed- 
ing pretty ; gold, and blue, 

and green, and crimson, and all manner of dainty hues flash from its 
walls and ceiling. Stucco, in images, scrolls, and other delectable 
patterns, shines whitely and brightly from every " nook and coigne 
of vantage." A score or two of pious sisters, with here and there 
a brother (just like the Protestants in that respect), are worship- 
fully following the old priest at the altar in his sacred mumblings. 
How much better a dear, delightful prayer-meeting, even in a less 
glowing chapel ! Yet I confess to a liking to these bright colors, 
and know not why they should be kept out of the house of God. 
His own house, builded by His own hands, whether of the earth 
about us or the heavens above us, is thus arrayed, only far more 
splendidly. And Moses and Solomon each set forth their Taber- 
nacle and Temple in gorgeous hues and dyes, and gold and pre- 
cious stuffs. Let not the worshiper worship the array, and he can 
adorn it after his pleasure and his purse. 

That old padre would make a good Methodist in one respect, 
perhaps in others ; he knew how to take a poor appointment and 
make it a good one. That is more than many a Protestant can 



196 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

do. He did not grumble when sent to this "finished" town. 
Western readers know what that word means. The East has 
none such. He came and saw, and did not hke the dilapidated 
condition of affairs, and set himself to work to get up a new 
church, or to make an old one as good as new. There was not 
much money here, as there is not usually where such preachers are 
stationed. But he gets what he can at home, and pushes abroad ; 
begs it, brick by brick, and tint by tint, and penny by penny, poco 
poquito, little and least, till he gets the money and work, and fin- 
ishes his cozy box for his half a hundred worshipers. A hundred 
would jam it. That is the only non-Methodistic part of the pro- 
cedure. But in a town which is full of big and empty churches, he 
may have thought that it was well to make an exception, and so he 
chose " a little house well filled." 

I hope he may yet be found among the Protestant ministers. 
He will be one of the most useful when he does come. 

We ride a mile farther, past a big church ruin — which my party 
offer me for our church, but which is respectfully declined in fa- 
vor of the gay little box just left — and, going through a stretch of 
green fields, ascend a slight hill, ride up a string of broad stone 
steps, and halt at the closed doors of the Church of Guadalupe. 
There are many of that name in this country, the Divine Virgin 
near Mexico not being one-childed in respect to temples or idola- 
ters, if she was, as the Romanists assert, in respect to her married 
family. 

The view is beautiful, but desolate. Streets run straight in all 
directions, but without a house. Churches besprinkle the vacant 
landscape. The maguey makes the fields green, and grasses more 
fit for man and beast cover some of the pastures with their early 
beauty. The mountains are about us, vast and lonely, and " all 
the air a solemn stillness holds." It is not so much a church town 
as a church-yard. 

Before us rises the famous Pyramid. We came here to get the 
right point of observation for that curiosity. It comes forth out of 
a very level plain, and is evidently built up from that base. Some 



THE SIZE OF THE PYRAMID. - 197 

fancy that it is simply a hill enlarged, but a glance from this spot 
will change that theory. It covers over forty acres, and is two 
hundred and three feet high. So the measurements by Lieutenant 
Beauregard attest ; and he was a good scholar then, if not a good 
citizen afterward. But he has become that also lately, and makes 
his beginning and end harmonious in patriotism. 

Mr. Beecher says somewhere that one can understand the labor 
involved in making a mountain by shoveling and wheeling and 
dumping a few barrows of earth in his own lot. The Cholulans 
•shoveled, wheeled, and dumped (though, indeed, they did not wheel, 
but carried it on their shoulders and heads) not less than a score 
or two of millions of such barrow-loads, to make a temple for their 
chief god, and on which many of those who built it, or their chil- 
dren, were offered in sacrifice. It is a big as well as a bad faith that 
would thus make multitudes erect joyfully their own funeral pyre. 

This pyre, with a base of forty acres, is of the size of Boston 
Common. Conceive of those free -religion Puritans leveling off 
that sacred place, and bringing loads of earth from Brighton, Brook- 
line, Dorchester, and Somerville to erect the whole leveled square . 
into a pyramid as high as the pine-apple knob of its State-house ! 
Up, up, up slowly creeps the mighty plateau, growing narrow as it 
grows tall, like many uplifted men. Yet when above the tallest 
house of Beacon Street, it is twenty acres across ; and when it 
reaches the dome of the Capitol, it is ten acres across ; and when 
it stops at the pine -apple knob, it is two or three acres across. 
And all this for faith, and a faith which involved their own immo- 
lation, or that of their nearest friends and kindred ! How happens 
it that Boston goes to Buddha for its god ? He lies nearer home 
on these Aztec plains ; he is a native American, the better suiting 
their national conceit ; he shows us a faith that makes Buddha's 
nirvana tame, for suicide is always baser than submission to anoth- 
er's knife. The pyramid of Cholula is the shrine that should draw 
these worshipers. Here is the eleventh religion that should swal- 
low up all their ten, for it is more majestic than any save the One 
that builds its temple in the skies, and offers up its one Victim, the 



198 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




PYRAMID OF CHOLULA. 



Divine Author thereof, freely and of His own will, for the world's 
salvation. 

The pyramid that rises before us is one of the chief illustrations 
on the surface of the earth of the piety and powerlessness of man. 
Its base is twice the width of Cheops, though its height is less than || 
half It has another disadvantage : its Egyptian kin are placed . 
on the edge of a flat plain and of low hills, both of which they eas- 
ily overmaster. This is on the edge of a plain, but is under the 
shadow of the tallest mountains on the globe. Not thirty miles 
distant are their peaks, not five, the beginning of their upheavals. 
It was a daring thought to put a growth of man by the side of i 
these stupendous domes, and as a work of man it deserves the 
greater commendation for the daring. ■ 

The Chicagoans are contemplating transferring some boulders '' 



NUMEROUS CHURCHES. ■ ig^ 

to their boulevards. The}'- may find encouragement in this Cho- 
lula labor of love and faith, done probably at small expense, for 
love and faith work cheap ; done in the long-vanished centuries, 
vi^hen love and faith, if no holier and vi^armer than now, were none 
the less active and powerful in their ignorance — more so, I fear, 
than ours is, with all the light of the Gospel shining straight upon 
our hearts. Shall these poor blinded worshipers, like the men of 
Sodom and those of Chorazin, rise up in the judgment, against us, 
saying, " If we had seen your day we should have accepted it in 
gladness and fullness of heart ?" 

We ride round the church where we have been looking and mor- 
alizing, witness the verdant and magnificent desolation on every 
side, pass through the still, deserted town, and climb the sides of 
the man-made hill. The ascent convinces you of its artificial con- 
struction and of its remarkable proportions. These forty acres 
are piled up in valleys and hill slopes, irregular and natural to-day. 
The path is cut under steep and lofty cliffs, on whose exposed side 
is a mass of stratifications, brick and clay, in regular layers. Trees 
grow along the path, tall and old ; fruit and flower trees of the 
tropics, brilliant in colors and green with fruit. Orchards open 
half-way up; ravines drop down close to the summit. All the 
traits of natural hills appear. 

The pyramid once stood, evidently, near the heart of the town. 
From it, in every direction, straight and comely avenues still pro- 
ceed. From these, equally straight streets stretch for a mile or 
more in all directions. These streets, except a square or two 
about the plaza, are entirely void of houses, except the churches. 
These stand forth on all sides, near and far, some skirting the 
bases of the mountain range, whose edge comes within two or 
three miles of this spot. We counted forty-one of these edifices, 
and some were omitted even then. Almost fifty churches still 
stand about this pyramid, many of them large and elaborate struc- 
tures, all of them erected at no small cost by the conquerors and 
their successors. The Indian Mecca is gone, but these efforts to 
subdue it to the true faith remain. 



200 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



Not content with these ancient efforts to hold Cholula, the at- 
tempt is yet kept up. This summit exhibits its most striking ex- 
pression. The church that long stood here was cast down by an 
earthquake not long since, and another is nearly completed in its 
place. It is small, not over fifty by twenty. The tiny chancel 
may be a few feet wider. Five altars are in this box, one each side 
of the entrance, one each end of the chancel, and one at the usual 




VIEW FROM THE PYRAMID OF CHOLULA. 

place, in the rear end of the chapel. On this bit of stone and plas- 
ter are lavished more beauty and luxury than on any like structure 
I have seen, here or elsewhere. It is not covered thick with gold- 
leaf, as is the chapel in the Church of Santo Domingo in Puebla, 
or some of the chapels in Mexico. They are old-fashioned. This 
is up with the times. Delicate tints, abundant enamel or porce- 
lain in various colors, carved work in green, and scarlet, and blue, 



QUETZALCOTL, THE IDOL. . 201 

and gold, choice paintings, frescoed marbles that make the real 
look cheap, real marbles that hardly make their counterfeits cheap- 
er, everywhere " a gem of purest ray serene." The work has cost 
thirty thousand dollars, and much of it has been given, both of la- 
bor and of substance. Not less than fifty thousand dollars is its 
actual cost, and that is half, at least, what it could be done for in 
the States. 

And all this for a box that will not accommodate one hundred 
people, and that no hundred people will ever visit at one time ex- 
cept when it is dedicated, and possibly some feast day or two dur- 
ing the year. 

It is a specimen of Romanism. Every thing for effect. A su- 
perb little chapel on the top of this pyramid was essential to the 
predominance of the system, possibly, in all the State. So the 
funds of the Church are lavished on it without stint, and Our Lady 
of the Remedies, to whom it is dedicated, is to be complimented 
by the prettiest bit of useless jewelry that has been laid at her 
shrine for many a day. 

This pyramid, it is said, was dedicated to the worship of the 
white and benevolent god, Quetzalcotl. He it was who gave the 
people many good lessons, and left for the East, saying he would 
return again. It was his expected return that made so many of 
the people accept Cortez and his faith as the fulfillment of that 
prophecy. And, despite the cruelties of the Spaniards and the im- 
perfections of their faith, there is no doubt that the benevolent god 
did return in that invasion. The horrid human sacrifices that took 
place on this very summit to this same god — twelve thousand a 
year, it is said — show how needful was that advent. Seventy thou- 
sand persons were sacrificed to the god of war in Mexico in the 
year i486 — only thirty-five years before that city fell. It was time 
for it to fall. 

This summit, and many lesser ones about it, smoked daily with 

these victims. Their hearts were being cut out, three every hour 

of every day, year in and year out, and their bodies served up in 

daily religious and sacramental repast. Was it not time that it 

14. 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



came to an end ? True, a low type of Christianity replaced it ; but 
any type is infinitely superior to that intolerable barbarism. The 
natives were oppressed afterward, yet no more than they had been, 
while they never after fed an altar or a banquet. The poor fami- 
ly remained poor, but it remained united. The Virgin and her 
Child were a tender grace in idea and worship compared with 
those awful demons. And to-day this people are getting ready 
for the purer form of Gospel truth that is coming to their doors. 
They will reject all idolatry as they did those devouring devils. 
They will accept the whole Gospel with more heartiness than they 
did that imperfect expression of it. The mound of Cholula shall 
be consecrated to the Saviour of Remedies, the Divine and only 
Physician, and these natives shall use their rare gifts, not in orna- 
mentations which lead astray, but in elevating contributions to 
Him who gave their gifts, and will rejoice in their befitting conse- 
cration. 

Our ride wound through gardens where the peach-tree hung full 
of blossoms, where the crab-apple was yellow ripe, where oranges 
flourished, and all other tropical delights. It seemed a very para- 
dise, and it was. Only man — how poor, how hapless his lot! 
What huts he hid himself in ; what sorry outfit for life ! Table 
and chairs has he none, nor bedsteads, nor beds ; just a mat on 
the floor, a bowl to steam his beans in, and a platter on which 
to fry his tortillas. No books, no papers, no apartments, parlor, 
kitchen, nor bedroom. 

Is there not a chance for the Gospel here? The New Testa- 
ment and a fine-tooth comb have been suggested as the form this 
coming revelation should take. They are a good beginning, but 
a vast structure of society and soul must be built thereupon ; a 
structure of beauty not like that on the pyramid, simply useless, 
and therefore vain, nor like that of the pyramid itself, solid but 
earthly, but a structure of truth, of virtue, of culture, of sweetness, 
of every thing included in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

One can see the answer of Romanism in this ruined Cholula and 
flourishing: Puebla. These sacred cities have not advanced these 



1 



THE DA WN APPEARING. , 203 

natives one iota in culture. The untutored, undeveloped native 
that first looked on Cortez, it was, in dress and mien and nature, 
that bowed about the bishop in those Sabbath vespers. Three 
hundred and fifty years, nine generations of Roman Catholic cul- 
ture, have not advanced him a step, except in abolishing human 
sacrifice, and that the mass of the people accepted rather than ap- 
proved. Shall the other forms and forces of Christ have no better 
report in their trial of centuries ? If not, God will reject them, as 
he is evidently rejecting this long dominant religion. Not centu- 
ries, not years even, hardly months, should elapse before these peo- 
ple give evidence of thfe radical change the true Gospel works in 
its believers. They are showing it already. They will more and 
more. The better clothes they wear to Protestant service is a 
sign of the inward change. Cholula and Puebla will be crowned 
with a coming Christian civilization that will make all their past 
barbaric. Amen and amen ! 



204 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



IX. 

A DAY AND NIGHT AT EL DESIERTO. 

A Point of View. — The Woods : their Peril and Preservation. — How we got 
here. — Chapultepec. — Tacubaya. — Santa Fe. — Contadera. — Guajimalpa. — The 
Forest. — The Shot. — Solitude. — The Ruin. — Its Inquisition. — A Bowl of 
Song. — Moonlight Pleasure and all-night Horror. — Morning Glories. — Its 
History. — A more excellent Way. — Home again. 

Let me have Turner's pencil for a moment. How your black 
and white would burn ! On this rock, high and lifted up, come 
and sit. You are panting from the long pull and the steep pull 
up the gorge ; but you forget it all in the landscape, near and re- 
mote, that lies under your eye. It is torrid and temperate at a 
glance. Could we see round that lofty point, we could add and 
frigid also ; for there sit the snow peaks that bring the north 
pole to the equator. But these apart, the scene is one of exquisite 
beauty and grandeur. The gorge beneath us is lined on both sides 
with munificent pines, firs, and hemlocks; not stinted and spin- 
dled, as they are on our northern hills, nor clipped and shaven, 
but in all their original, untrimmed, uncut magnificence. In the 
midst of them sits a castle-like ruin, such as the Rhine seldom af- 
fords, England seldomer, and other lands never. Its gray walls, 
thick and high, its several domes and turrets, its archways and en- 
trances are of the best Rhine quality. It is on a cleared point 
that is well above the bottom of the valley and yet well below our 
towering observatory. It is a reminiscence of feudal times in 
looks and situation, and one could easily transfer himself almost 
three hundred years backward, when its foundations were laid. 

It is not a castle, though very like a castle ; but a convent, built 
in 1606, the year before the first permanent English colony was 
planted on this continent, and quite a while before the English col- 



PISTOL PRACTICE. . 205 

ony was planted on a rock — the colony that has colonized the 
whole continent down to Mexico, and will yet colonize that and all 
south of it. 

This elaborate building was then erected in a country that for 
eighty-five years, nearly a century, had been under European sway, 
culture, and religion. So the Pilgrim Rock must abase its head 
before the rock-built walls of El Desierto. I would like to see it 
lowering its crest before any thing. 

Beyond this grand forest and its romantic ruin lie the plains of 

Mexico. The sun blazes over them, making it all a lake of golden 

mist, out of which rises many a bold and brown sierra, that at our 

height and in this radiance looks neither bold nor brown. For 

forty or sixty miles this open landscape stretches. A matter of 

twenty miles is of no consequence in this country, so clear is the 

atmosphere. Emerson's "Brahma" is here fulfilled in one of its 

lines, 

" Far and remote to me are near," 

The basin is of treeless land, salt-marsh, irrigated meadow, and 
shallow lake, widi knobs of hills embossed upon it. Just round 
the corner of that neighboring point of pines, to our right, lies the 
central spot of the park — not a rude upheaval of mountains, but a 
fair cit}^, with its towers and domes and roofs flashing in the set- 
ting sun. We saw it often in our ascent hither. It is a city that 
perhaps best of all on earth fulfills Tennyson's description, 

" Sown in the centre of a monstrous plain, 
The city glitters like a grain of salt," 

The monstrous plain and the dazzling sunshine envelop this town, 
and make it blaze like a diamond amidst diamonds. 

This writing, begun at sunset on the mountain-top, is being con- 
tinued before the convent walls, not long after sunrise. The rest 
of the party, gentlemen and gentlewomen, are practicing their pis- 
tols on the walls. Small success have most ; but one, the guide 
and guardian of the band, puts his bullet through the mark every 
time. I content myself with telling Lessing's fable of the Jupiter 



2o6 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

and Apollo who went out on a shooting-match. Apollo put his 
arrow through the centre of the bull's-eye. " I could beat that if 
I had a mind to try," says Jupiter, and stalks haughtily home. 
Many a critic of shooting guns and ideas is equally contemptuous, 
critical, and careful, and so maintains a reputation that one shot or 
one book of his own would utterly destroy. " Critics are men that 
have failed," says the sarcastic Disraeli, in "Lothair." They would 
fail if they tried. This Jupiter critic of sharp shots did try, foolish- 
ly, and landed his ball way up the side of the wall. Content, he 
retreats to his mossy seat by the side of the fountain, and resumes 
his pen and his true vocation. 

How would I love to sit for hours and days on the stone fount- 
ain where this is being written, and under the grand cypresses that 
tower above me with less spreading branches than their twin hem- 
lock of New England, or on the broad parapet that makes a low 
wall for the front of the cloister. " The sound of the going in the 
tops " of the pines and hemlocks, which David heard in the tops 
of the mulberry-trees, comes solemnly on the ear, the same sad 
wail that they have given forth to the like mortal ear since first 
these forests were pierced and these walls arose. 

How sad are the voices of Nature. The moan of the forest and 
of the ocean have often been noticed. Was that part of the note 
of lamentation sent forth from Nature when man fell — that groan- 
ing after restoration which she and all that her inhabits still unut- 
terably utter? Why should they not be pleasant sounds, full of 
music and mirth too ? Why should they not laugh for joy ? The 
hills skipped for gladness when their Lord came. So may the 
whispering of forests be yet full of joyousness. When the earth is 
redeemed, and man is all holy and all happy within and without, 
the trees shall clap their hands, and every flower smile audibly its- 
fragrant bliss. Could you mix senses better than in that sentence, 
Mr. Critic? Mrs. Browning is an authority for part of it; for does 
not she say of the angels, 

" I ween their blessed smile is heard ?" 



PRESERVATION OF THE WOODS. 207 

These woods, I fear, will never see the leaf-clapping day ; for the 
Vankee is around, and a forest of primeval grandeur affects him 
precisely as a company of first-class negroes used to affect "a good 
old Southern gentleman, all of the olden time." Mr. John M. Ma- 
son, Buchanan's minister to France, met the Haytien minister at an 
imperial levee. As he carelessly contemplated his ebon equal, in 
all the pomp and circumstance of ambassadorial dignity, he was 
asked what he thought of his sable associate. " I think he would^ 
be worth eighteen hundred dollars in Richmond," was his prompt 
reply. So the American of to-day says, when he sees these magnif- 
. icent trees, " I think they would cut into so many thousand feet-, 
and be worth so many petty dollars." Let us enjoy them while 
we may, for they are soon to vanish. 

Has not General Palmer and his troupe of engineers been up 
this very pass exploring for a route from Mexico to Toluca, and so 
to the Pacific ? The railroad is coming, and these trees must pre- 
pare to go. Only one thing can save them — a camp - meeting. 
Maximilian tried to buy them, and could not, though he offered 
eighty thousand dollars for the place. The Methodists may get a 
few hundred of the acres by the grace of General Rosecrans, in- 
cluding, I trust, the old convent, and so preserve a bit of this 
grand picture for future generations. They* are about the only 
conservators of our forests. Their presence is timely here. With 
the railroad that comes to level these original woods let the Church 
come to save a portion thereof from devastation. 

It is well located, too, for such a service. Less than twenty 
miles from the capital, easily accessible by the multitudes, we may 
yet hear the voice of prayer and praise ascending in its newer and 
better forms from these most venerable cloisters and forests. 

Let me tell you a little more fully our visit to each of these 
choicenesses. Taking to horse, we cantered merrily through the 
silent streets of the city at six o'clock of the morning of Tuesday, 
the nth of February. No shawl or overcoat burdened our shoul- 
ders or stifled the breathing. A summer morning, soft as July, it 
was. Just as we were pacing through the Alameda, and had en- 



2o8 OUR NEXT-D'OOR NEIGHBOR. ^^\ 

tered the paseo, or fashionable drive, the sun met us, and smiled re- ■ 
sponsive to our smile. The road ran along the arches of the aque- 
duct, looking very Roman, and hiding under them robbers, who not 
unfrequently here waylay coach and horseman, which is very Ro- 
man also. 

A half-hour, and we pace along the base of Chapultepec, stand- 
ing high above the aboriginal pines and cypresses that skirt its 
base and climb its steep sides. Tacubaya is next passed, a pretty 
suburb, with superb parks and grounJs of Mexican millionaires. 
Here, a few Saturday nights ago, one of these chiefs, Senor Escan- 
dron, gave z.fete champetre to nine hundred persons, at an expense, 
it was said, of forty thousand dollars. Dancing and drinking were 
the chief amusements of the Sabbath-breaking hour and its pre- 
liminary preparation ; gambling and gorging were the interludes. 
These grand pavilions and gardens are so infested with robbers 
that none of these gentry dare spend a night here except they are 
strongly guarded. So safe is this country in a large village not 
four miles from the palace of the President ! 

Now comes a long pull of a dozen miles up a broad and dusty 
road, amidst mules and men equally heavy-laden and equally sad- 
faced — mules often diminishing into donkeys, and men into boys. 
The human beasts of burden carry on their backs huge crates fill- 
ed with earthenware and other commodities, weighing, one would 
guess, several hundred pounds. These are held to their backs by 
a broad strap going over the forehead, and the hair is left thick, 
and made to grow thicker over the eyes, in order to make a mat- 
ting for this strap. I have seen stones and bricks so carried that 
weighed, I was told, four hundred pounds. Their heads bow to 
the burden, and they trot along under their huge loads as fast as a 
horse can walk. 

The road ascends the spurs of the Toluca range ; through San- 
ta Fe', a string of adobe huts ; through Contadera, where a body 
of troops are stationed that eye us soldierly, that is, quietly and 
searchingly; and at last leaves us at the venta of Guajimalpa, a 
wayside station for changing mules on the stage to Toluca. 



AN UNSURPASSED COMBINATION. 209 

Here we turn off the dusty highway and climb a smooth, open, 
steep hill. The water rattles gayly down a brisk stream, which a 
mile or two back we had turned aside into a pasture path to en- 
joy. The smooth upland soon becomes rougher and more wooded, 
and after a mile or more we enter a cleft in a smooth-faced wall 
of a venerable look, and are in the grounds of the Convent of El 
Desierto. 

The woods grow thicker in numbers and in size. No needy 
knife-cutter has been allowed to ply his trade in this sacred in- 
closure. For two hundred and sixty-nine years they have been let 
alone. Only the path, of a single horseback width, has been cut 
through them. This path winds along the sides of lofty hills and 
deep ravines, densely shaded, now climbing, now declining, for a 
mile and a half; then, winding up a steep acclivity, it emerges 
upon the open space on which the convent stands. 

One notices in this location the same taste that governed the 
abbots of England and Europe. They always chose the most 
beautiful spots for their retreats. They had an eye to the beauty 
of nature, all the keener, perhaps, because they were forbidden to 
look upon all other beauty. They knew how to make a wilderness 
blossom like the rose, but they selected the wilderness most sus- 
ceptible of such blossoming. This rare combination is one of the 
best. Few ever equaled ; none, we believe, surpassed it. Their 
whole area was nine leagues square — three miles in each direction ; 
and all encompassed with a choice brick wall, that still survives in 
large part and perfect form. 

The clearing is narrow, woods hugging the buildings closely on 
either side, removed not a hundred feet in the rear, but opening on 
the front to the breadth of a single pasture lot, a slope of five or 
ten acres. 

Was ever solitude more solitary ? In this bright, warm morning 
not a creature is stirring except the visitors and visited. Not a 
bird or insect, or man or beast. In fact, I only saw one insect in 
all the woods and walks, and that was a wasp, that had fallen on 
the ground, and fluttered and fainted from sheer loneliness. The 



2IO OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR: 

birds were alike absent. A black hawk sailing over the black 
wasp was the only representative of that tribe, except the cock and 
hens of the court-yard. 

How near akin seem our very dogs and horses in the dense lone- 
liness. One easily detects in these favorites of man a yet closer 
affinity, and wonders why, when horses are admitted to the revela- 
tor's heaven, dogs are excluded. They must be the ugly dogs of t| 
Eastern countries, and not their developed associates of Christian 
men. No animal seems to have acquired so much from the Gos- 
pel as the dog. Every other creature seems unchanged in nature 
in every estate of man. The ancient horse was as proud and pet- 
ted a beast as the modern. The cat, as my Spanish phrase-book 
teaches, is false to-day, and has never improved in heart or head ; 
but this companion of man in his degradation, which always clings 
to him how low soever he plunges, seems also to arise with him, 
and in its sagacity, fidelity, and courage almost gives warrant of its 
possible immortality. Since Mr. Emerson allows that only about 
one man is born in five hundred years who is worthy of immortali- 
ty, perhaps that rare example of the possibilities of our race may 
find as his chosen companion the alike fortunate representative of 
the canine race, and of that dog and that man the distich may 

prove true : 

"Admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dog will bear him company." 

The convent gate stands open, and we gladly enter the deserted 
Desierto. A stream of coldest water leaps out of the face of the 
high terrace before the entrance, and gives us that best of drinks^ 
which man's perverted appetite is so constantly rejecting for mud- 
dy and heavy beers and ales, and sour, sharp wines, and hot bran- 
dies and whiskies. It is one of the greatest proofs of his depravi- 
ty, this plunging into false and fatal beverages. How great the 
work to be done in this country in rescuing poor and rich from 
these drunken abominations ! And not this country only. 

The buildings covered not less than ten acres. There were 
three large open courts, or cloisters, surrounded Vv'ith arcades, a 



THE MASS AN IDOLATRY. 21 1 

half-dozen long aisles, narrow and low -arched, out of which the 
cells of the monks open, and other apartments. Each cell had a 
private court of its own, open to the sky, but closed by high walls 
from all outward observation. 

There were a multitude of smaller courts, three or four chapels 
or oratories, besides the church, and two large inclosures of several 
acres, which were possibly its gardens and possibly a portion of its 
approaches. The chief church was used for several years as a 
glass factory, and a huge furnace built under the dome and black- 
ened walls still attest its change of use. It reminded one of the 
hero of " Put Yourself in his Place," who used an abandoned 
church as his furnace for the making of his tools, and thus made 
the ghosts useful in protecting his rights against opposing trades- 
unions and his high Tory uncle. So even the fertile genius of 
Charles Reade finds his fiction lagging behind this fact ; and thus 
there is nothing new, not only under the sun, but even in the realm 
of the imagination. It did seem a little out of place, this glass-fur- 
nace where the altar stood ; but the idolatry of the mass deserved 
perhaps this desecration, as Palestine had to be trodden under foot 
of the Gentiles because its chosen people had themselves trodden 
under foot the Son of God, an identity of words which the Holy 
Spirit expressly uses, with that verbal exactness which He always 
employs, in order to set forth the righteousness of that banishment 
and punishment which has continued now over eighteen centuries. 

The mass is still an idolatry, worse than any the Jews fell into ; 
and this desecration is but a type of many that have preceded it, 
and more that shall follow, until the true worship shall not be a 
repetition of an accomplished and, therefore, now idolatrous sacri- 
fice, but a setting home of this sacrifice divine, with faith and prayer 
and earnest exhortation and conclusive reasoning, to the hearts 
and lives of the hearer and believer. 

Outside this church is a spacious /(i;//(7, or court, once surrounded 
by broad arches and shaded walks, only an arch or two of which 
remain. Go to the outer edge of it and wind down a narrow stair- 
way, and you enter an under -ground series of cloisters, the size 



212 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. I 

of the arched wall above — a dark, low, fearful range of dungeons, « 
which not a ray could penetrate. Out of it opens at one corner a I 
chapel of flagellation, perhaps of inquisitorial judgment, for tradi- j 
tion hath it that this convent was for many years the seat of the I 
Inquisition, and that it was removed hence to the Dominican con- 
vent in the city. But this is denied by others, who declare that { 
the Carmelites, by whom it was built, never had charge of the In- | 
quisition ; and that this, therefore, could not have had any thing to 
do with those persecutions. It is replied, on the other hand, that 
when the Carmelites abandoned this spot for one more retired, at 
a greater distance from the city, the Dominicans occupied it, and 
perverted it to their cruel purpose. I hope not, for I should hate 
to think so fair and so secluded a retreat could have been made 
hideous with that horror. Yet these doleful arches look as if made 
for such purposes, and one shudders as he creeps through them, 
and fancies he sees his Christian brethren, two hundred years ago, 
chained to these walls and sitting in thick darkness, on their way 
to the rack and the fagot and glory. 

We emerge gladly, and take to the outer garden, where an ora- 
tory, inclosed on three sides and open to the western sun, gives a 
charming view of the grand mountains and grander forests. It has 
such echoing qualities that one whispering in a corner, with his face 
close to the wall, is distinctly and loudly heard by one in the diag- 
onal corner, though no others in the room can hear even the sound 
of the whisper. Thus two gentlemen at opposite corners and two 
ladies talked each to each, and no one heard a sound except that 
whispered by their own opposite. It has singing qualities as well, 
and as the quartette of voices joined in national and religious mel- 
odies, one could but exclaim, with a slight variation, 

" O listen ! for the vale profound 
Is overflowing with the sound !" 

It seemed as if this bowl of stone bowled out the melody (do not 
read that bawled), and echoed in every rocky fibre to the exultant 
harmony. With what gusto did it sing the John Brown song (it 



ASSUMED VIVACITY. 213 

seemed as though that had never been sung before), and " The Star- 
spangled Banner," and " Blow ye the Trumpet, blow !" and tender- 
er airs, such as "Tenting on the Old Camp-ground," and "A Charge 
to keep I have." They all melted together, and we agreed that 
when the coming camp -meeting is held in these old woods, this 
chapel in the garden will be a choice resort for the happy minstrels 
of those happy convocations. 

The choicest walk, after all, is by moonlight. It is familiar to 

say, 

"If you would see Melrose aright, 

Go visit it by pale moonlight." 

This far larger and costlier abbey, and situated more romantical- 
ly, deserves like visitation. The flood of silver raining from that 
mine in the sky — an appropriate figure for this silver country — 
poured over all the patios and azateas, or flat roofs, on the porce- 
lain-tiled domes, into the gardens, everywhere but into the still 
roofed corridors and shut cells. They looked all the blacker and 
more fearful for the contrast. We climb to the belfry, and let the 
sound of our own music creep into our ears, while we also send 
out over the valleys and woodlands a cheerful summons to the rob- 
ber serenaders, that may make us sing another song before morn- 
ing. We sit on the flat roofs, with their slightly raised battlements, 
and continue our talk and song till the hour grows late, and the air 
slightly chill, for this is nine thousand feet above New York, and 
the midnight February air is not quite as warm as her midnight 
air of August. 

All this vivacity was assumed. We may as well own it : we 
were really scared. The gentleman who conducted us, of un- 
doubted personal courage, felt some fears for the ladies in his care. 
Of the two men with him, one made no pretense as a marksman, 
and had not even put a revolver in his belt. We prepare for the 
night by barring heavily the outer door of the ruin and inner doors 
of our apartments, as well as the shutters to their glassless windows. 
A fire is burning on the unused hearth, whose light is companion- 
able and comforting:. The ladies lie undressed on a couch before 



214 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



the fire, and the gentlemen occasionally on mattresses ; for the 
chieftain is out most of the night patroling the walks, and his as- 
sociates frequently creep around behind him. Every sound is 
caught by exceedingly erect ears, and many never made are dis- 
tinctly heard, the spirit within hearing in the outward ear: 

" The airy tongues that syllable men's names, 
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses." 

This desert wilderness is profuse in such vocalizations. A couple 
of charcoal-burners, perhaps from the mountains, grazed our gate, 
and came near being grazed by our balls. A whispering breeze 
in the tree - tops seemed to be the low orders of the assailing 
forces. A horse, if such there be, wandering loose on these hill- 
sides, if not a ghostly horse, sounded like the tramp of steeds rush- 
ing down upon us. The very breathing of the dog, who murmured 
in his sleep, was taken as an omen of alarm. So, with fits of fee- 
ble slumber and interludes of long waking, with w^anderings about 
the ruins by moonlight, stealthily seeking a stealthy foe, we man- 
aged to get through the night ; and the morning finds us, oh, so 
courageous ! Who's afraid ? Who cares for the beggars of Santa 
Rosa, or Guajimalpa, and other unpronounceable towns about us? 
Let them come by the legion. Our four revolvers and one carbine 
are equal to them all. 

Yet we had reason to fear, for the master of the first village be- 
low had warned us of the danger, and the administrador of the 
place declared it not improbable that we should be visited. These 
villages harbor hordes of robbers, and we were well studied by 
their sidewalk committees as we passed through them. The two 
men who passed our gate at ten of the night, and even tried it, 
were perhaps a part of a gang, rather than charcoal-burners, who, 
seeing through two eyelet-holes one of the party with his carbine, 
gave such a report as dissuaded others from returning with them 
to receive our hospitality. Others reported, after we got back, that 
the country round considered the deed most perilous, and won- 
dered at our escape. Perhaps our audacity or indifference was. 



A SUBJECT FOR THE CANVAS. 215 

after all, our safety. Undoubtedly, we did risk something in coming 
hitlier, and once and again half regretted our temerity. But it paid. 

We take another climb in the morning to another summit — 
a two-hours-and-thirty-minutes' tramp, very different from the two- 
thirty of the racer. But the result was different ; for we gained 
health and appetite, and a glorious prospect in our two-thirty toil 
up the face of the mountain. Before us and far beneath lay the 
high, uplifted plains of Anahuac, with the city on its breast, a daz- 
zling diamond. The two snow-peaks blazed more brightly than 
the city they inclose ; and all the valley, its lakes, meadows, and 
mountains, cities and hamlets, burned in the torrid flame. A slight 
smoke, the first I have seen, left some of the remoter ranges less 
distinct. Yet the Sierra of Real del Monte, eighty miles away, was 
not afar off, and more distant ranges girt the horizon. Below us 
the cleared knolls were patched off into pastures by hedges of 
maguey, whose dark, broad leaves, even at this height, were visibly 
glossy and green. 

It was less recherche than the one the night previous. The con- 
vent was not the centre of the scene, nor the woods the circumfer- 
ence. They were put one side, as the city had been in that pic- 
ture. I prefer the seclusiveness of the first ; and, if I were rich, 
would give an order quickly to some of these deft artists, of whom 
Mexico has many, to put that beauty on the canvas. The Falls 
of Atoyac, on the mountain rim of the Sierra Caliente, and the Con- 
vent of El Desierto are the true perfections of loveliness so far be- 
held in this country ; and it is hard to say which of the two is 
chief. This has the superiority in the mingling with its woods and 
ravines, man and history and the Mexic plain ; that, in its dancing 
water-fall, plunging into a green basin, whose walls of tropical lux- 
uriance rise two thousand feet above the white - sprayed bottom. 
Who will give me both ? The greedy spirit cries, who ? And echo 

" The green silence doth displace " 

with a mocking " who ?" 

Desierto has never had its desert in fame, though not without it. 



2i6 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

It was a great resort in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
within fifty years after the first stone was laid. One Thomas Page, 
an English ecclesiastic, visiting it then, says: "The orchards and 
gardens were full of fruits and flowers, which may take two miles 
to compass \ and here among the rocks are many springs of water 
which, with the shade of the plantain (or banana) and other trees, 
are most cool and pleasant to the hermits. They have also the 
sweet smell of the rose and the jasmine, which is a little flower, 
but the sweetest of all others; and there is not any flower to 
be found that is rare and exquisite in that country which is not 
in that wilderness, to delight the senses of those mortified her- 
mits." 

The rose-bush and the jasmine remain yet, the path through 
the garden being lined with the former, growing as tall as your 
head, and the latter clinging to the crevices of the walls and along 
the ruined battlements, as fragrant and as pretty in its pink and 
checkered blossoms as it was more than two hundred years ago. 
The garden is now neglected, but could easily yield all tropical 
luxuries in this frostless air. No wonder the place became a great 
attraction, and Desierto was the fashion for Mexics. "It i.s won- 
derful," says Priest Thomas, " to see the strange devices of fount- 
ains of water which are about the gardens ; but much more won- 
derful to see the resort thither of coaches, and gallants and ladies, 
and citizens from Mexico, to walk and make merry in those desert 
pleasures, and to see those hypocrites, whom they look upon as liv- 
ing saints, and so think nothing too good for them to cherish them 
in their desert conflicts with Satan." Even so early had the fruit 
of sainthood begun to ripe and rot. Like Martha's Vineyard, it 
had ceased to be so much a spiritual as a luxurious resort. Will 
the camp-meeting to come here fall into like condemnation ? 

He says these visitors brought presents, and the image of our 
Lady of Carmel had treasures of diamonds, pearls, golden chains, 
and crowns, and gowns of cloth of gold and silver. "Before this 
picture did hang in my time twenty lamps of silver, the poorest of 
them being worth a hundred pounds." Quaintly and profitably he 



WANDERING IN VACANT CELLS. 217 

adds, " Truly, Satan hath given them what he offered unto Christ 
in the desert. All the dainties and all the riches of America hath 
he given unto them in that desert because they daily fall down and 
worship him." Is it so yet ? Doth wilderness temptation supplant 
wilderness faith? Then will like desolations follow that have fol- 
lowed here, and in all the famous abbeys of the world, even the 
wasting of their treasures and the ruin of their palaces. Those 
twenty lamps, of ten thousand dollars' value and upward, where 
now ? And the treasures, and gifts, and luxuries, and soliciting of 
prayers and masses, where are they t 

The monks became aware of the perils this popularity was 
bringing, and withdrew to a remoter seclusion, farther up the 
mountain. Even there their mission failed, and the head of this 
convent was one of the first of those who rejected Romanism ; 
though he has since returned to his old vows, not, I trust, to abide 
therein. 

As we wander about these vacant cells and close-walled paths 
we fall into sympathy with their vanished life, and repeat with too 
much inward approval Southey's lines : 

" I envy them, those monks of old, 
The books they read, the beads they told, 
To earthly feelings dead and cold, 
And all humanity." 

Yet there was not much of mortification or of reading, as we have 
seen. Little as there was, however, it probably surpassed that of 
the surrounding people. They kept alive what little literature did 
exist, and performed most of the penances that were inflicted. So 
we come back to this present, and say : 

" Yet still, for all their faith could see, 
I would not these cowled churchmen be." 

Or, with piety and poetry surpassing Emerson, should we say, with 
Wesley : 

" Not in the tombs we pine to dwell, 
Not in the dark monastic cell, * 

^5 



2l8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

By vows and grates confined ; 
Freely to all ourselves we give, 
Constrained by Jesus's love to live 

The servants of mankind." 

It is not in this hidden and idle manner that one must serve his 
generation ; but in earnest efforts to bring all souls out of sin, ig- 
norance, evil habit, and all degradation. These monks of Mount 
Carmel fared sumptuously or sparingly ; but the peon still bowed 
his head to his burden, and the Spaniard still robbed and murder- 
ed. Better far less introspection and more outward action. Thus 
only will the world come nearer Christ and heaven. 

We left regretfully the ancient pile and its more ancient sur- 
roundings. At half-past three that torrid winter afternoon our last 
picnic meal was shared by no less than four dogs, who ate the 
crumbs under the table, and even the meats off of it. They were 
worth eating, as I can testify. An English gentleman purveyed 
and a good English cook prepared the store which thus evanished 
at last from under the table. 

We rode through the cool, rich forest, and out into the blaze, 
which burned our backs and necks as if it came through a burn- 
ing-glass. There were the same burdened mules and men, don- 
keys and boys, the same lounging soldiers, the same sad-e)'ed wom- 
en ; one group alone merry with laughter, as they chased a rat 
among their ragged huts. The sun drove the long shadows over 
the plains, disappeared in a crater of fire, that shot up flames from 
its black bowl, while Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl glowed rosily 
long after valley and hill-top were in shadow and slumber. The 
moon arose, and our spirits with her, for it grew perilous even on 
the highway as it grew dark, and we paced chattingly along the 
Empress Road from Chapultepec, taking a moonlight ride, that 
rarest and riskiest of pleasure jaunts in Mexico. It is too bad 
that to the very centre of the city there is no protection against 
robbery. We escaped, and entered our courts in four hours after 
we left that of the convent, tired and delighted with the ride, the 
fright, the tramp, the ruin, the whole of El Desierto. 



EQUIPMENTS FOR RIDING. 219 



X. 

A RIDE ABOUT TOWN. 

The Horse and its Rider. — Paseos. — Empress's Drive. — A Relic of Waterloo. 
— The Tree of Montezuma. — The Woods. — View of Chapul tepee. — Baths of 
Montezuma. — Tacubaya Gardens. — The Penyan. — Canal. — Floating Gardens. 
— Gautemozin. — The Cafe. 

This country is made for the horse, and the horse for the coun- 
try. He paces and canters deliciously, and the air and the clime 
fit perfectly to his gait. Horseback in England and the States is 
a luxury pursued under difficulties. The first difficulty is in the 
horse, which is seldom trained to such service; and the second 
and worse one is in the weather, which is not sufficiently uniform 
to make the luxury a permanency. Here every morning is perfect, 
and about every horse. The saddle, too, is made for riding; far 
superior to the English saddle, it holds you on, and does not make 
you hold yourself on. So if you come to Mexico, take to the horse. 
Only gentlemen, however, indulge in this pastime, and very hand- 
somely they ride : straight legs, laced with silver buttons, broad 
hat of white felt, with a wide silver band expanded into a huge 
snake-like swell and fold ; their horses often gayly caparisoned, and 
delighting evidently in their lordly service. There is no more 
characteristic or agreeable sight in Mexico than these riders; far 
more agreeable than it is when witnessed a few miles out of town, 
more or less, and the graceful horseman politely requests of you 
the loan of your watch, wallet, -horse — if you have one — and some- 
times all your outer apparel. That is a sight not unfrequently 
seen, all but the last, close to the city gates. Two of these city 
riders were relieved by others of these city riders of horses and 
purses, our last Sabbath night, on the crowded and fashionable 
drive of the town, not a mile from the Alameda. 



2 20 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



But it is safe to take these rides in the morning ; and American 
ladies, with the bravery of their blood, are willing to take them 
also. The prettiest ride is to Chapultepec. At six in the morn- 
ing is the hour. A cup of coffee, hot and hot, and a sweet cracker 
are the inward supports against the jouncing and rocking. The 
Alameda is pranced past, scowling at us from its deep thickets, its 
very smiles changed to frowns under the possibilities of its con- 
tents, for robbers and revolvers may suddenly appear from out its 
greennesses. 

The paseos open at its upper end, broad, straight, and handsome. 
Two or three of these carriage roads come together here about a 
statue of a Charles of Spain, the only royal effigy allowed to re- 
main, probably the only one that ever entered the land. The de- 
cayed bull-fight arena stands opposite the monument, itself a rel- 
ic, like the effigy, of by-gone institutions — by-gone in the city, but 
still extant, if not flourishing, in the rural capitals. Two of these 
avenues go to the Castle of Chapultepec. The one that leads di- 
rectly to its gates was built by Maximilian, under his wife's orders, 
and is now called the " Empress's Drive," but for many a year it 
was known as "the Mad-woman's Drive." It is straight as an ar- 
row from an Aztec bow, lined with young trees, and besprinkled 
half the way to the castle. It is the favorite thoroughfare for coach 
and horseman, though these dare not usually go over half its length. 
That is why it is wet down no farther. To pass that bound is to 
become possibly the prey of robbers, so bold are these gentlemen 
of the road. 

We canter carelessly on, mindless of robbers in the morning 
calm. Do you see that little old man who trots easily along? He 
was the author of the fortunes of the Rothschilds. He was at Wa- 
terloo in their employ the day of the battle, took boat before the 
official messengers, and bore the tidings of the fall of Napoleon to 
London, to his masters. They instantly bought heavily in Europe- 
an government stocks, and made immense fortunes by their speedy 
rise. It is odd to meet this representative of the first and most 
successful of modern private expresses trotting his nag, in his su- 



PICNIC GROUNDS. 221 

per-eightieth year, on this drive, made by a creature of a third Na- 
poleon from him whom he supposed on that day to be, in person 
and in family, utterly and forever overthrown ; and that creature of 
his, too, a daughter of a king that succeeded that fallen emperor, 
and husband of an archduke, the nephew or grand-nephew of his 
own empress, Maria Theresa. Certainly history, even to-day, has 
curious combinations. You would never have thought that such a 
nugget could have been picked up on this far-off road. The hill 
and buildings rise majestically before you, more ancient than any 
other like fortress and palace in the world. It was a seat of power 
before the Spaniards entered the land. It is a solitary hill, apart 
from all others, thrust out into the plain like a nose upon the face 
of nature. It is a huge rock, whereon the waves of war have beat 
for a thousand if not for two thousand years, 

" Tempest-buffeted, glory-crowned." 

The gate is reached. A high wooden slat-fence keeps out the 
peon, but does not keep in the view. Soldiers as sentinels stand 
at its gates. The road winds through groves of ancient woods of 
Yosemite style in nature and in size. Not far from the entrance 
rises and spreads the gigantic tree known by the name of the Tree 
of Montezuma. It probably oft refreshed him before he dream- 
ed of the terrible invasion of the white-face and the loss of his 
kingdom, and perhaps witnessed his bewilderment after that dread 
event. It is, however, silent on these scenes, unless these whisper- 
ing leaves are trying to tell the story. 

Farther on we enter a large grove of these large trees, a remnant 
of the vast forests of such that once overshadowed the land. Here 
picnics are held by city people, who forget the past in their mo- 
mentarily happy present. 

The road winds up the hill, past two Aztec idols hidden in the 
thick-leaved bushes, up the bare, steep sides which Scott's men 
bloodily mounted, and ends in a garden near the top. Here the 
passion-flower hangs along the walls, and a multitude of less hot- 
blooded kindred blossom by the pathways. Birds as brilliant as 



222 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 




THE TREE OF MONTEZUMA. 

the flowers line the walls, and one without beauty of plumage con- 
quers all with his wonderful beauty of song. It is the old law of 
compensation: '■'-Non omnia 07mies possiwius'''' — " Ev^ery body can 
not do every thing." 

The suite of rooms that compose the castle are large, and com- 
mand a magnificent prospect. The city lies below, amidst green 
groves and gardens, with shining drive-ways and spacious fields be- 
tween. The hills tower grandly beyond. It is a spectacle worthy 
of a king or emperor, or president — the worthiest of them all. No 
such panorama has any other palace in the world. Windsor, the 
next most beautiful, is tame to this. Schonbrunn, Potsdam, Fon- 
tainebleau, and all, are flat and cheap to this rare combination. 
But, then, one is apt to live longer in those palaces, and to die 
a more natural death, if one death is more natural than another, 



SEWARD AND JUAREZ. 223 

and that makes their occupants content with humbler luxuries. 
From Montezuma to Maximilian, the occupants of this hill palace 
have many of them made a violent exit from their troublous hon- 
ors. Juarez dared not stay here after night-fall without a large 
body-guard ; and it is abandoned to occasional state breakfasts, 
the heart of the city being judged a safer residence. Maximilian 
enjoyed the retreat, and filled the palace with his own pictures and 
the imperial symbols, the only remnants of which are a few pitch- 
ers and basins with his monogram upon them. This is pretty near 
the estate to which the first and imperial Cagsar sunk. If his clay 
was utilized to a chink filling, the crown of Maximilian turns into 
this clay of a wash-basin. 

A dining-hall in the rear of the front rooms, on the backbone 
of the hill — hog's back it might be called for sharpness and rough- 
ness — opens pleasantly upon both northern and southern views. 
Here Juarez gave Seward a breakfast, the last public entertain- 
ment in this hall, and one worthy to be made, the saved fating his 
savior ; for had it not been for Mr. Seward's army of sixty thou- 
sand men at the Rio Grande, under General Sherman, and his 
letter to M. Drouhn L'Huys, requesting his master to gratify the 
President of the United States by withdrawing his troops from 
Mexico, Juarez would have still been at Washington, if alive. 
Both chiefs died in a few months after that breakfast ; died at 
scarcely a moment's warning. So all that are to come to great- 
ness here must turn to dust, as all have turned. Not much to 
choose between the Spanish blooded prince slain by an Aztec, 
and the Aztec slain by a Spaniard. Ecclesiastes is profitable 
reading at Chapultepec. " Vanitas vanifatum, omnia vanitasr Its 
woods are old, its rocks, its landscape, its mountains. 

" Stars abide — 
Shine down in the old sea : 
Old are the shores : 
But where are the old men ? 
I who have seen much, 
Such have I never seen," 



224 ^^^ NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

says the Earth-song, in Emerson. But Emerson fails to see \vh}' 
the earth sees them not, why the conscious lord of creation is its 
weakest victim. The earth has seen such. A thousand years was 
once their day. But only a day at that. Only a babe was Methu- 
sala to the earth, and the sea, and the stars. Ah, sin, sin, what 
hast thou done ! 

You can see from the southern windows the Molino del Rey, 
where the bloodiest of the battles of General Scott was waged. It 
is a white mill, not two miles off, on a spur of the mountains, and 
looking innocent of the fierce fighting which it had drawn around 
its thick walls and high hill-side. The Mexicans have erected a 
handsome monument there to their own valor, in withstanding with 
a whole cityful of two hundred thousand the shock of a little 
handful of a dozen thousand. It withstood for a season only, for 
they soon yielded and made their retreat good to this hill, whither 
the Americans followed, and. whence they with steadfast step pur- 
sued them to the city and the President's palace. You can see 
the whole route of the troops, from their debouching between the 
snow mountains yonder, to their battles of Contreras, San Antonio, 
and Cherubusco, below the city round to Molino del Rey above 
it, and so hither, and into town. 

But let us descend, for the sun is getting up, and we must be off". 

Just before we reach the gate-way we see a pool, cut into the 
ground, partly filled with water. It is well walled, with steps de- 
scending into it, and large enough for a comfortable bath. This 
is called the Bath of Montezuma, and was probably used by him ; 
but it was only a receptacle. The fountain whence it sprung is 
just out of the present grounds, and is the private property of Se- 
nor Escandron, who makes many a penny out of its waters. We 
pass out the gate, ride under shading willows by the water-courses, 
enter the gardens of the bath, and the inclosure of the spring. 
Here is a pool fifty feet square and forty feet deep. The water is 
so clear that you can see it breaking out of the rock-bed, a tiny 
hill-side and hollow amidst the ferns and grasses that cover that 
natural floor with a perpetual carpet. Here to plunge you will 



i 



TACUBAYA: TWO MILES FARTHER. 



225 



find delightful in this rising heat of a January sun. An adjoining 
square the water flows into, whose floor is paved with tiles, and 
whose depth is not above your neck. So, if you are timid, you can 
splash in the artificial pool. A like bath for ladies is near by, and 
a saunter in the garden follows the refreshment. 




THE BATHS OF MONTEZUMA. 



If intent on a ride farther in this direction, we can keep on to 
Tacubaya, two miles farther out. There are found some superb 
gardens, the private grounds of the gentlemen of the city. Groves, 
ravines, rivulets, lakelets, mounds of flowers, tall Australian gum- 
trees, and a multitude of sorts we can admire but not name ; views 
of the snow range, cooling eye and picture ; a sumptuous house, 
with its broad courts open to visitors, encircled with flowers, sedans, 
and pictures ; even a chapel for family worship ; every conceivable 
thing, but — safety. The value of these owners is too high in the 



226 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

kidnaping market for them to trust themselves so far from town 
overnight. So the place is deserted except for fetes, when a body 
of troops is detached for their protection. A little less glory and 
a little less danger would be desirable. 

Another favorite drive is southward. The exit is less agreeable, 
but once out of town the trip is more natural and more delight- 
ful. We pass on our horses, no other mode is appropriate, hard- 
ly any other possible, by the great square, southward. One route- 
leads us to the Penyan, a hill overlooking the lake, full of caves 
and of robbers, whose horrid lair is surpassed by their more horrid 
aspect. It does not seem possible that human beings can fall so 
low. The Indians of the plains are hardly as fierce and degraded 
as these children, perhaps, of Montezuma and Cortez. There is 
but little comfort in pausing among them ; for you must give bak- 
sheesh as surely as if at the Pyramids, and you may not get off 
with what you are willing to give. The views hardly repay the 
risk. So let us turn to a more agreeable company and scenery. 

Leave the city by the south-western gate. You will have hard 
work to find it. The straightness of the streets gets so narrow 
and short that it has all the effect of crookedness, as a straight line 
cut into an infinite number of short straight lines may become a 
circle. So these bits and threads of lanes have all the bewilder- 
ment of Cologne, the head of crooked towns. The streets are as 
dirty and the huts as poor as it is possible for either to be, and we 
gladly reach the gate and touch the open fields. Level and low 
lies the land. The road is hard, though pulpy. 

The canal is soon struck. This is the feeder of the cit}''. Along 
its watery way for five hundred years, perhaps more, have the peo- 
ple and the produce of the region come to town. It is the oldest 
canal in the world, unless China ranks it, which is doubtful. It is 
not a canal for horses ; the boats are pushed along by the boat- 
men. 

Garden "truck" is the chief freight, though green lucern grass- 
es, for the horses of the town, frequently load heavily the little 
craft. Pleasure and carriage boats ply the waters, long, narrow, 



A QUESTION FOR ANTIQUARIANS. 



227 



covered with awnings, and well patronized by the people on the 
line. 

These canals were just as busy when Cortez first came over 
yonder pass as to-day. He saw and noted their traffic when he 




THE CANAL. 



marched along their side, the invited guest of Montezuma, to the 
doomed city. How many ages they had then been employed he 
knew not ; no one knows. 

Along their sides spring up villages, as the Erie Canal has made 



228 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

towns, great and small, beside its banks. Some of these villages 
rise to the dignity- of towns; others are mere halting-places for the 
boats. 

But what made the canal ? Who and when, may be beyond our 
reach. What did it is more apprehensible. It was the floating 
island. That curiosity of this country is a veritable fact. As soon 
almost as you leave the wall, you perceive these novel lands. The 
ridgeway of the canal is wide enough for several horses. On one 
side is the long ditch, on the other many short ones, cut straight, 
not more than a rod or two apart, filled with water, and inclosing 
plats of ground of about a quarter of an acre. The ditch, cut square 
about these plats, allows the proprietor, lessee, or laborer to get 
easily around his lot in his bit of a dory, or scow, from six to 
twelve feet long, and two wide. • 

The ground is thus patchworked for miles. At times the spaces 
are larger; but that is their uniform character, at least near the 
city. Nearer the mountains they get into almost natural forma- 
tions, and grow shrubs and even trees on their spongy foundations. 
This soil is largely made. The soft, saturated earth is superplaced 
with layers of muck and sand and other soils. These sink gradu- 
ally by wash and by weather, and other soils are placed upon them. 
So they are kept up and made fit for culture, and grow deeper with 
every deposit. 

They hardly float, but they rock and yield to a footstep. Far- 
ther out they are said to fluctuate som^ewhat, yet there they never 
float as a boat, but at the most wave a little to and fro with the 
moving stream. These gardens are cultivated the year round. 
" The plowman overtakes the reaper, and the treader of grapes 
him that soweth seed." It is perpetual seed-time and harvest. 

We ride by the once famous hill, where the sacred fire was kin- 
dled once every half-century, a black-purple peak, perhaps three 
hundred feet above the marsh. All the fires in all the land were 
extinguished, and out of flint and steel, from the bleeding heart of 
the human sacrifice, the new flame was here kindled, and sent 
throughout the land. On return we enter by the paseo, where the 



1 



A VISIT TO THE "COMMODIA. 



229 




FLOATING GARDENS. 



bust of Guatemozin stands, on a pedestal in the centre of a square, 
with commendatory words to his valor, as the last of the Aztecs. 
It is another proof of how the sons build the sepulchres of those 
whom the fathers slew. Why a statue of graceful, gentle Monte- 
zuma has never been erected, nay stranger yet, why one of Cortez 
ha^ never been carved, is each a mysterj^ or would be in any other 
land than this. Guatemozin is fortunate above his conqueror; for 
not a bust even bears his features to posterity. But he is not the 
last of the Aztecs. They are rising again to power. The last 
President was a pure blood ; many of the present leaders are. 

Our rides have wearied the horses, if not you. Let us go back 
to the Commodia, give them up to the mozos, and ourselves to a 
delightful breakfast at this choicest of cafes. You will find coffee 
and rolls, fried and sliced potatoes, and ice-water, and beefsteak, 
equal to the best in the Palais Royal. Here we can sit and talk 



230 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

of the past and future of the fair and almost fairy-land, strength- 
ened outwardly with bath and ride, and inwardly with this deli- 
cious berry and its attendants. Nowhere can you get such coffee 
as here. A small black tin pot of blackest and hottest coffee in 
one hand, a like small black tin pot of whitest and hottest milk in 
the other. Pour. If a native, you will not grunt "enough" till the 
tumbler (for that they use) is well filled. If a foreigner, a third of 
a glass satisfies from the coffee-pot, and the milk leaves it then 
stronger than you dare to drink it at home. This berry is native, 
and should replace with us the coarse Rio and costly Java, to the 
latter even of which it is superior. 



A MAMMOTH CAVE. 



231 



XI. 

A GARDEN IN EDEN 

A Temptation.— Up the Mountains. — The Cross of Cortez.— Sight of the Town 
and Valley. — The downward Plunge. — A Lounge. — Church of Cortez. — The 
Enchanted Garden. — Idolatry. — The Market-place. — The Almanac against 
Protestantism. — Palace of Cortez. — The Indian Garden of Maximilian. — A 
Sugar Hacienda. — The latter End. — All Zones. 

In Eden was a garden. Eden itself was paradise, but the para- 
dise had an inner paradise to which the outer delights were the 
same as brass and iron to the gold and silver in the age of Solo- 
mon. So Mexico may be an Eden, but there is a garden eastward 
and southward in this Eden that makes its other beauties tame. 

My stay was drawing to a close, and a temptation to unite a lit- 
tle pleasure with business was too much for my feeble will to re- 
sist. So far I had made only one excursion of which the Church 
was not the sole end and aim — that was the two days and a night 
to the Convent of El Desierto, and even there I could not resist 
the conceiving, if not the planning, of a camp-ground in its ancient 
and magnificent woods. 

But a cave of huge dimensions, second only to the Mammoth 
of Kentucky, if second to that, is reported to be three days to the 
south, less than two days beyond Cuernervaca. A party of ladies 
and gentlemen arranged to visit the cave. I was invited to join 
them. I hardly saw how I could take four days for recreation. In 
addition to the two already taken out of the sixty spent here, this 
would make a week's vacation — altogether too much time to tnrow 
away in this luxuriating clime. But if we were going back to some 
Ante-romanistic usages as well as faith, we might utilize the cave 
for hermit purposes, as the Desierto grounds are to be utilized, I 
hope, for camp-meetings ; but we can hardly get Methodists to im- 



232 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



mure themselves in celibacy and huts, even in Mexico. So it is 
not possible to make that a negocio, as they say here ; a " biz," as 
the rougher Yankee of the West puts it. 

I go to Cuernervaca because there business lies ; but the cave, I 
fear I must say, through a glimmer as to the possibility of reaching 
it, allures me on. 

The city I seek lies to the south, over the mountains, between 
Popocatepetl and Ajusco, the third peak of the valley, and occa- 
sionally specked with snow. The morning is gray and misty, and 
if in the States would insure rain. Here it is an anomaly that will 
perhaps yield a shower, but more probably be burned up by the 
torrid sun on his way over Iztaccihuatl. 

We ride through a long avenue, well lined with trees for several 
miles, a finer drive out of the city than New York or Brooklyn can 
boast, yet only one of half a dozen equally delightful and equally 
unsafe j for cavalry patrol these roads away up to the city's gates 
to protect the traveler from the robber, the foreigner from the 
native. 

It is fifteen miles before the spurs of the mountains are struck. 
A charming landscape it is, and a morning of exhilaration, despite 
the threatening clouds — nay, because of them. What lovely ha- 
ciendas appear on the roadside, with trees sprinkled over them, 
brooks running through them, green beds where the sickle is busy 
cutting down green food for the market, broad plains, green and 
brown ; surely here is paradise before we start for Eden ! Yet 
these splendid properties can be bought for a song. Who wants 
to found a Christian college near the city ? Now is your chance. 
For thirty to fifty thousand dollars you can buy immense estates 
with stone buildings, including often the chapel, all ready for occu- 
pation. 

Mexacalcingo and other " cingoes " lie off" to the left in moist 
meadows and lakes, with trees rising, like the earth itself, being out 
of the water and in the water, and islands floating, or unsteady to 
the tread. They float up and down only. Amidst these amphibi- 
ous luxuries the people dwell in a Venice of perpetual greenness. 



THE SUMMIT REACHED. ■ 233 

The road turns up the hills, and becomes very rough and steep. 
A long, sharp, strong pull of a mile brings us to San Mateo — St. 
Matthew — a village of bamboo houses, standing in black, fat sand, 
and among tall and very green and very beautiful ash-trees. It is 
as lovely and as dirty and as dangerous as you wish or do not 
wish. Robbers are thick, but we are safe, for the guard is our de- 
fense. 

On we climb, through a frigid vegetation and temperature, as I 
found it on my return — " a steady pull at the collar,'" as Murray 
puts it in his "Swiss Guide" — for a dozen miles. Behind us 
glowed the Mexic valley, green and glossy, where lake and tree 
met together. It is a magnificent landscape, and naturally set 
Cortez violently in love with it, as it had the Aztec and the Toltec 
before him. One does not tire in admiring its wonderful combina- 
tion of snow range and purple mountains, of broad lake and ever- 
green foliage, of pretty town and grand city. The lakes here are 
an important part of the landscape, if landscape it may be called 
which they make up. Tezcoco, the largest, seems to fill all the 
outer section of the valley. The lesser ones near at hand are be- 
sprinkled with trees and towers, green and white, mingling prettily 
with their level lustre. 

The summit is reached at La Guardia, a small collection of huts, 
where a breakfast that I ate not was paid for. Its contents I do 
not presume to describe. It takes time to learn to like cod-fish, 
and beans, and sauerkraut, and tomatoes, and corn-bread, and all 
local luxuries ; why not, also, to learn to like tortillas and chili, a 
hot and not a cold piquante, and other dishes I do not dare to 
spell any more than to taste ? 

Breakfast over, we cross the summit through black and barren 
scoriai, the tossings, evidently, of craters, and ere long sight a red 
stone cross upon a round gray pedestal, two or three feet high, 
called the Cross of the Marquis. This, it is said, is the boundary 
mark of the possessions of Cortez, who was created Marquis of the 
Valley of Ojaca, and placed this cross as the beginning of his pos- 
sessions. 

t6 



234 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Woods wo\^ appear, pine chiefly, not large, sprinkled over much 
space, and suggestive of a cold climate. We are over ten thou- 
sand feet above the sea ; surely it has a right to be cold. For 
several miles we gradually slope downvi^ard, until suddenly the val- 
ley we seek opens at our feet, ablaze with the hottest beams. 
Clouds cover us, and make the sunny hollow of Cuernervaca look 
the warmer. 

It is a bowl, at this height seemingly not ten miles from rim to 
rim, yet probably fifty would not pace its base. The bottom is not 
level, even at this height, but embossed, as it were, in many forms 
and colors. That curved knot, looking not unlike the cow's horn 
which its name signifies, lying not far from this side of the em- 
bracing hills, is Cuernervaca. A belt of emerald surrounds it, espe- 
cially deep in color and in extent on its farther or lower side. A 
little farther on you see spots of a light and very brilliant green. 
They are patches here, but miles there, of the sugar-cane, portions 
of the sugar haciendas, the chief produce of the valley. One rare- 
ly sees such a vivid green. " Living green " indeed these fields 
stand dressed in, like those beyond the swelling flood and the 
rocky rampart of death. 

The valley is small as compared with the Mexican, but not small 
of itself. It is hemmed in by mountains, the tall Popocatepetl 
forming its north-eastern tower. This looks uncommonly grand in 
contrast with the fiery beauty which it coolingly overshadows and 
protects, like a calm and loving father bending over his beautiful 
and passionate daughter. 

We scamper down a horrible road ; through an Indian town 
named Huachilaqui ; down a steeper and more horrible road, i 
amidst boulders tossed up from the never-mended pavement; jump- i 
ing from rock to rock, almost, in our mad plunging ; the ladies, 
perched above the driver, scared and delighted with the leaping i" 
coach and the glorious landscape. For two hours we thus go head- ' i 
long, until the hollow is struck, and we race merrily on, still slight- 
ly descending, and run down the rattling pavements of the clean 
town, every door and window of which seems occupied, to note the : 



AN ACTUAL PARADISE. ■ 235 

welcome arrival of the stage, which only once in two days is visible 
to the naked eye, and which is the only vehicle I have seen in all 
the town — a rarity, therefore, of a double value, in its contents and 
in itself They gaze at the top seat, whose occupants are so busy, 
bobbing their heads to escape the lamps hanging on ropes across 
the middle of the street, that they can not gaze back in return. 

The scamper ends in flying through a portal and coming to a 
sharp halt in the court of the Hotel Diligencias, as all the best ho- 
tels are called in this country. 

To give you a taste of tropical perfection, I shall have to make a 
journal of my two days' stay in Cuernervaca. I hardly expected 
to stay as many waking hours. The cave, forty miles away, I could 
but dimly see by faith, and did not see at all by sight. One of the 
party was sick, and delayed his coming. We waited for him, but 
I did not go with them after his arrival. My vacation was no 
vacation. I made an inspection of the town for business, but also 
had some time to spare for enjoying its less official aspects. 

Do you remember Poe's lines "to Ellen.?" If not, get it, and 
read in it the description of this tiny city and its not tiny surround- 
ings: 

"A thousand 

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no wind dared to stir except on tiptoe." 

You have, of course, read William Morris's "Earthly Paradise?" 
It is cold in its warmest colorings to this natural and actual para- 
dise. It is just the right length, too, for this lassitudinarian cli- 
mate and people. Its oversweet prolixity exactly fits a land where 
'' dulces," which are sweetmeats, preserves, and pastry all in one, 
are of very many varieties, and the tart and lemon -juice never 
acetate their sweetness ; where even the lemons themselves lose 
their acidity, and are sweet to tastelessness, and lemonade is only 
half- sweetened ice-water. Tennyson's "Lotos -Eaters" also is a 
sample of the clime, except that he puts too much vigor into the 
thought, a blunder of which Morris is never guilty, thought being 
as far from his mind as from a Cuernervaca belle's or mule's. 



236 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Come with me on a saunter. It can be nothing else. The busy 
trot of New York or whirl of Chicago would degenerate into a 
"loaf" here. 

First, let us go to that which is the most ancient, the Church. 
It is well to give our firstlings of a walk and a talk to the Lord as 
well as of all other things. Cortez, wicked as he was, was very 
careful to make these oblations. Oblations concerning which often, 
I fear, the Lord said, " My soul hateth." It is one of the most an- 
cient on this continent, though very juvenile as compared with 
many in the older, but not Old, World. A large open square has 
three not large chapels at three of its corners. The southernmost 
is that erected by the conqueror. It has Maximilian's arms over 
the door-way, which Juarez sought to remove ; but the citizens for- 
bade his officers. They had a kindly heart for the fallen emperor. 
It has nothing especially attractive about it except a flying buttress 
and one or two high arches. 

Just above it is the enchanted garden, rich in tropical fruits and 
flowers. It was built, that is, its walls, walks, fountains, steps, and 
"other costly arrangements, by Laborde; not its present fruits and 
flowers, which are its chief attractions. Laborde was one of the 
discoverers of silver, who amassed wonderful fortunes. It was af- 
terward a resort for Carlotta and Maximilian, and, though in decay, 
is still full of rare luxuries of vistas and trees and bowers and flow- 
ers. The roses run up on tall mangoes, and hang in white and 
wild luxuriance from their lofty branches ; lilies with delicate and 
drooping leaves, the most delicate I ever saw, bow their graceful 
heads in fragrant silence. The mango's branches and leaves are 
so compact and dark that it makes a shade and a coolness like a 
lofty roof. The time of its fruit is not yet, so one can not repeat 
as quite apropos to this hour Hood's subtle and pimgent sarcasm 
on Constantinople as the place 

" Where woman goes to market as the man goes." 

It is said to be as delightful to the taste as the Circassian market- 
ings of the Stamboul are to the sight. 



PROCLAMATIONS OF "INDULGENCES:' 237 

Bananas, cocoa and other palms, oranges, coffee, and all manner 
of precious fruit, abound ; while the vistas along the broken arches, 
half-empty pools, and flowering trees, to the black mountains near 
at hand, are as beautiful as desolate. Like its once profusely 
wealthy builder and its profusely pompous occupants, it has itself 
become a ruin. How much better to have used this wealth in 
founding of hospitals and schools, that would have remained a 
perpetual illumination and elevation of this still degraded popula- 
Jiion ! Will the overflowing wealth of America to-day be any more 
wisely spent ? 

Nowhere have I seen idolatry more rampant, or the Church au- 
thorities more faithfully upholding it, than here. On the walls of 
one of the chapels in the Cortez church-yard are proclamations by 
the Archbishop of Mexico and Bishop of Puebla offering eighty 
days and more of indulgence for a certain number of repetitions of 
the Lord's Prayer, Ave Marias, and the sweet numbers of Jesus, be- 
fore pictures in that chapel of St. John, and that of the Magdalen, 
and the Virgin. These were all printed and put up as a permanent 
institution. I saw none earning the indulgence. Perhaps they had 
a number of days yet left from previous exercises, and did not need 
to go through any labor of prayer at present ; as the Neapolitan laz- 
zaroni refused to carry a valise because he had no need of money, 
since he had had his breakfast and the time of dinner was not yet. 
In fact, I saw hardly any worship of any sort in this city. It seem- 
ed as if the Church at all hours was, like the climate and the town, 
fast asleep. It can wake up like these mountains about us in 
blood and fire and vapor of smoke. It is reported to be already 
thus reviving. I heard a rumor, on the first day of my arrival here, 
that there had been a riot at Oajutla (pronounced Wahootla), forty 
miles from here, and that forty Christians had been killed. This 
rumor is not confirmed, but it shows something of the state of the 
atmosphere, and possible earthquakes and eruptions, that such ru- 
mors could get current. 

But let us get away from the torpid present, and the perhaps 
volcanic future, into a once powerful past. Leave the gardens and 



238 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

churches on the highest ridge of the town, the backbone of the 
back, along which it lies. We pass down a clean and narrow 
street ; the narrower the better here, for the narrower the cooler. 
A few rods and we come to the market-place, the prettiest, and 
one of the largest, I have seen in Mexico. It is surrounded by a 
pillared arcade broad enough for many hucksters to sit in the cool 
breeze and do their petty traffic. Walk around this shaded quad- 
rangle, not halting long in the meat department, for those raw and 
bloody strips that dangle by the yard are not especially attractive 
to sight or smell. The fruit department makes it up, however. 
The women sit on the ground or on a mat, their stalls being on 
the ground likewise. Here are oranges, water-melons, peaches, 
bananas, and unnumbered fruits whose names you know not, nor 
their natures. They are pleasant to the taste, most of them too 
pleasant. Beans of many sorts and colors, mats, hats, maize, toys, 
and knickknacks, fill up the space with wares, and make it busy 
all the morning with buyers and sellers. 

Here, too, I bought an almanac which shows the danger there is 
of a Romanist eruption. It was a common little duodecimo, enti- 
tled " Calendario de Mariano Galvan Rivera, para el ano de 1873." 
It is the popular " Old Farmers' Almanac " of the people. Over a 
hundred thousand are said to be circulated. The months are filled 
with Church annals, and the whole is more of a Church annual than 
the almanac of any American church. In the middle is injected 
twelve pages of fine type, giving what it calls " Origen del Protes- 
tantismo." The most of it deals in harangues against the old Re- 
formers, Luther and Calvin, and in praises of the Jesuits. But it 
carefully shows that it is meant for modern purposes by its intro- 
ductory passages, wherein are these paragraphs : 

"The political dissensions which so lamentably separate Mexi- 
cans from each other, even in the bosom of the family, were not 
enough for the misery of our poor Mexico. There was still want- 
ing the far more lamentable religious schism, to which origin was 
given by the toleration of forms of religion which were not in the 
country, both whose principles and whose very names were quite 



. AN INJECTED DENUNCIATION. 239 

unknown among our people.* Hence, to give effect to the law of 
toleration, it was necessary either to invent new forms of religion, 
which was not easy, or else to import them from abroad. The sec- 
ond expedient was the simpler, because by the dollars (hard cash) 
of the missionaries, with its wonted efficacy and persuasion, innu- 
merable adepts were to be procured ; these missionaries being not 
a little aided by the ignorance especially of the people concerning 
the origin, principles, methods, and objects of the sects dissenting 
from the Catholic Church. 

"As our almanac is an essentially popular publication, we think 
that in no place would an article be more appropriate which aims 
to make known the fathers of the distinct sects comprehended un- 
der the common name of Protestants. Indeed, let us copy from a 
Compendium of Universal History by a friend, still unpublished 
for immaterial reasons, the part which relates to the origin of the 
Protestant Reform. From this will appear the corrupt manners, 
the excessive pride of the Reformers, and the vile motives which 
impelled them to separate from the Church in which they were 
born, and to attack doctrines which they had believed from parent- 
al instruction when young, and through personal conviction when 
grown up. We shall see, like Tertullian, the confirmation of the 
proscription of Catholic doctrine against the innovators of all times, 
since it alone has sprung from the apostolic fountain, and runs 
limpid, unpolluted with corrupt and foreign elements, down to our 
days, precipitating foreign ideas into the impure glitters of here- 
sy, and vigilantly guarded by two hundred and sixty popes in unin- 
terrupted succession from Saint Peter : a phenomenon which has 
given it a character of truth and divinity in eyes less thoughtful or 
more prejudiced against it." 

* The following was appended to the original : " Only our illustrious neigh- 
bors, the Yankees, have this faculty, be it said, unless we except the new sect of 
the Mormons, so that we are in fear and trembling lest our friends who have 
done us so much good should bestow it on us, and with them should come po- 
lygamy, community of goods, and other happy gifts which afflict our friends just 
mentioned j and, moreover, they are not very scrupulous, as we say." 



240 ^^^^ OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

How cunning is this putting of the case against "our illustrious 
neighbors, the Yankees." It shows the fear of the papacy and the 
power of the new movement, that such falsehoods as these are so 
diligently and widely circulated. It shows, too, where the persecu- 
tions arise, and who foster them. A priest undoubtedly wrote this 
perversion of history. The archbishop approves its circulation. 
They will create confusion and bloody work, but will not stop the 
new revival. 

Opposite this fine plaza, on the opposite ridge of the backbone 
from the Empress's Garden, stands the palace of Cortez. 

It is now a court and a prison. It was somewhat of both when 
he lived here, for he was a sort of prisoner, banished from the city 
of Mexico, and living as near it as he dare, under a surveillance, 
doubtless, all the time, of the emperor, for he was too great to be 
trusted with power and place. 

When he was besieging the capital he made a raid on this town. 
The deep ravine which incloses it on either side was crossed at the 
eastern or lower side by a tree being thrown across the chasm, and 
thus making a bridge for his soldiers. 

He was forbidden by the empress, as regent, from coming within 
ten miles of the city, because, as it is said, he gave his new wife 
four magnificent carved emeralds instead of giving them to the em- 
press. So much for being more of a lover than a courtier. But he 
evidently gave them to his lady expecting to get them again, which 
he did. But he had better lost his gems than his capital. 

He made this city his capital, and tried and hoped to make it the 
capital of the country. He built a large palace on the edge of the 
ravine we first crossed, that in its decay is a noble structure. It 
towers above the ravine for seventy feet or more, and covers with 
its courts several acres. The view from its azatea, or roof, is ex- 
ceedingly charming. The snow mountains seem almost at the gate. 
The fields stretch toward them for a few miles in easy slopes. 
Then ragged black peaks of ever}' contortion — a saw of iron — 
range along beneath the calm summits. They look like columns 
of lava, black, ragged, tall, and huge. The fields stretch off" west- 



THE EMPRESS'S GARDEN. 241 

ward and southward in green and brown and gold, and all around 
stand the comforting and strengthening hills. 

But just adjoining is the fairest scene of all. Right under the 
castle to the south-west, in a ravine and on its inclosing banks and 
upper rims, lies a paradise of perfect green. It is half a mile to 
a mile long and wide. The trees are lustrous as velvet, and every 
tropical delight of herbage greets us from these clinging gardens. 
They were a part, probably, of the grounds of the castle. Here sat 
Cortez and enjoyed their fragrant breath, unless, like his succes- 
sors, he preferred to enjoy that of his cigar. Here he plotted to re- 
turn to power ; annoyed those who ruled after him and over him ; 
got up expeditions to Honduras and California at immense loss of 
life, money, and almost fame, including among his losses that of the 
four grand emeralds, the holding on to which too closely caused his 
first and chiefest loss : that of the city he conquered and the gov- 
ernment he craved. The emeralds were lost in the Mediterranean, 
on an expedition to Africa with Gonzalez. If any body doubts it, 
let him go and pick them up. In his case, as in so many others, it 
was proved that 

" Quiet to quick bosoms is a hell." 

This exquisite valley, this lordly castle that has such "a pleasant 
seat," the thirty cities that paid tribute to him, the wife and children 
that revered him, the fame he had won and never lost, all these 
were nothing to " the hungry heart " that set him a-wandering even 
to his grave. 

Let us get into these delectable bowers at the foot of the palace, 
where they rest and toil contented to this day, the self-same sort 
that rested and toiled contented in his day. 

The debate as to the superiority of nature or art would never 
arise if you walked through the Empress's Garden, and then through 
that of the Indos. These lanes are as beautiful as England's, and 
that is giving them the highest praise. More beautiful in all save 
the dwellings of the people, and not much less so in that particu- 
lar, for neither land lifts its peasant to his proper seat. Trees of 
every known and unknown sort line the roadway. 



242 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

How would you "get on " if, inquiring of a gardener the name 
of a certain tree, he should generously and abundantly reply : " Esta 
es la zapote amarylla, esta zapote chico, esta el mango, esta la 
mam me, esta huave," and, pointing to the most beautiful of all, 
"esta coculi sutchel?" You would delight in recovering your En- 
glish and your senses by saying " That is the ash." And as hand- 
some as any is the ash, grand and green above its fellow of the 
North. Yet these trees are worth praising, and the flowers, espe- 
cially that of the odd name, "cocoli sutchel." It is a bouquet of 
fragrance and beauty unsurpassed. It grows at the end of tall, 
gnarled, homely boughs and trunk, a dozen separate flowers, each 
as large as the largest pinks, but of few petals. Red and white, it 
crowns this homely tree, a perfect vegetable beauty and beast. 

Magnificent roses blossom by the wayside, blush, crimson, white, 
as sweet-smelling as their best brothers next June in New York, 
and finer of tint and body than any you will meet there and then. 
Oleanders hang out their blazon, and huge white lilies depend par- 
asitically from appropriated boughs. The orange bears its three- 
fold burden of flower, and green, and yellow fruit. One bunch of 
eight big yellow boys on a single stem is bought for four cents, 
and sent with the regards of the wife of the consul-general to the 
wife of Dr. Butler — a present, like all the best gifts, valued much 
above its cost. 

Brooklets trickle by the roadside, and banana groves stand thick 
and tall as Illinois corn, thicker, if not taller, with bunches of fruit, 
and purple flower-buds big as pine-apples, and like them in shape. 

Two children are playing bull -fight in the street, the boy on 
horseback, astride a stick, varying that Yankee-boy pleasure with 
throwing a lasso around the neck of a younger brother, who fol- 
lows him around, bellowing and bullying. They laugh in wild glee 
over the childish imitation. 

A school in these bowers keeps up the noisy rattle of studying 
aloud, the tinkling bell not suppressing but encouraging the tu- 
mult. It was amusing, in one of these schools, to see how some 
boys showed their assiduity in study, on the presence of these 



SUGAR MANUFACTURE. . 243 

strange visitors, by a great increase of their volubility. Schools are 
everywhere, and these poor people can read and write very well, 
but have not any thing to read, and no occasion to write. 

They are catching zapote from a tall tree, and I learn how to 
gather nice apples and peaches without a basket, or without hurt- 
ing them. A boy far up in the tree picks the fruit, and cries out, 
" Vaminos" (here we go). A man below holds his blanket, or ze- 
rape, and catches the apple-shaped zapote, and rolls it easily upon 
the ground. The cry, the catch, the roll are instantaneous. It 
will be well to copy this in other orchards. 

The emperor had a garden here also, given him by the Indians, 
with their centavos, tlaquas, or cent-and-a-half pieces, and cuartillias 
(I spell these phonographically), or three-cent bits. A cottage was 
nearly finished, but never occupied, the veranda opening on a bath. 
It was a spot of luxurious idleness. He liked to come here and 
hide from the cares of state. In a little school-room near the 
church, in the farther of the two school districts, he gave a ball to 
the natives. They hold his memory dear ; the only place in Mex- 
ico that it is thus esteemed. His garden is fast becoming a deso- 
lation, and ere many years his brick, open, unfinished cottage will 
be buried under this abounding life. 

A sugar hacienda completed our Cuernervaca experiences. It 
is four miles from town. Horses carry us easily hither over a 
road impassable to carriages. High walls and strong inclose the 
court-yard of the hacienda. Indian workmen have their cane-huts 
just outside. Inside the wife of the administrador welcomes us 
gracefully, and offers coffee, chocolate, cognac, and cold water. 
We accept the last and best. She takes us round the works. 

The first apartment is devoted to grinding the cane, which is 
crushed between heavy rollers, the husk passing out, literally 
squeezed to death, the juice running a steady stream, of the vol- 
ume seen in an open water-spout in a steady rain, along channels 
or troughs to vats in the next compartment. Then it passes into 
boilers about ten feet deep, four feet of copper, two of brick, and 
four of wood. The copper only holds the liquid ; the upper part, 



244 '^^^ NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

opening widely, is for the froth and scum, good and evil, to disport 
in. The boilers under fire are filled to the brim with this bub- 
bling, which is constantly skimmed by workmen, with flat skim- 
mers half a yard across. They deposit their refuse in a trough 
running along the front of the boilers, and this flows into other re- 
ceptacles, to be distilled into the rum of the country. So the bane 
becomes more baneful by the banefulness of man. 

The sirup is taken to other boilers, where it is condensed yet 
more, and is ladled into large earthen jars two feet long, of conical 
shape, with a hole in the bottom. These jars are set on earthen 
pots after a certain crystallization is attained, and the hole opened 
to let the uncrystallized centre drip away. They are covered with 
a blue clay, or marl, which is prepared carefully in a semi-liquid 
form ; too liquid, it would permeate the sugar ; too dry, not affect 
it. This black mud absorbs the yellow color, and makes the mu- 
latto white, not the usual result of mixing black and yellow togeth- 
er. The white is a little dingy, and Mexican sugar is not as white 
as the American, they not using sufficiently powerful absorbents. 

These loaves of sugar, the shape and size of the jars, weigh an 
aroba, or twenty-five pounds. Each donkey or mule has twelve of 
these put on his back, three hundred -weight, and marches off to 
Mexico with his burden. You meet hundreds of mules thus load- 
ed. When a civil engineer said to an administrador of a hacienda 
that railroads would cheapen freight, he replied he got his freight- 
ing for less than nothing now. " How so ?" " My mules I raise, 
and their feed costs nothing. I give the driver two reals a day, 
and he buys his necessities at my store, on which I make a profit 
of a real above what I pay him. How is the railroad to help 
me?" 

But it will help the two-real laborer, and give him more money 
and better chance for its investment. 

The corn-husks are dragged into the court, spread, dried, and 
used for fuel the next day. The fuel ready for to-morrow's burn- 
ing was twenty feet high and wide, and two hundred feet long, the 
refuse of a single day. The clay, after serving as an absorbent, is 



A HACIENDA'S YIELD. 




245 



used for compost, the field being en- 
riched with its own sweetness, and the 
husk boiling its own juices. A chapel 
is connected with the hacienda, and will 
be a good place for a Protestant meet- ' ' '> 

ing one of these days. 

This hacienda belonged, it is said, to Cortez, and is now owned 
by the Duke de Monteleone, who is said to be his descendant. It 
yields thirty thousand arobas, or seven hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds annually, worth ten cents a pound on the premises, or sev- 
enty-five thousand dollars a year. The workmen ought to have 
over twenty-five cents a day. Some of them, it is said, get fifty to 
sevent3'-five cents. But of this there is doubt. The only thing 
that is cheap here is man. 

Our lady guide is thanked much for her valuable guidance, and 
we canter home amidst a glowing sunset. The mountains are 
cones of gorgeous color, and the clouds are redolent of flame. 



246 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The dear, delightful Indian paradise of fruit and blossom is trav- 
ersed, none the less agreeable in this setting. 

But another setting is here, of life, as of the sun. The two lit- 
tle bells of the little church are chattering quaintly, a half-way be- 
tween a toll and a ring. A company of white-dressed peasants 
are busily shoveling earth in the yard. Women, in blue and brown 
and black, are in the rear of these working-men, lamenting loudly, 
"What is it?" we ask our guide. "A funeral!" is his short and 
sad reply. The bells clang and moan rapidly, the women moan, 
and the men, as sad as either, sternly obey that unwelcome order 
of nature, and bury their dead out of their sight. 

It was a painful conclusion of a gala clay. What does all this 
overflowing of life in tree and plant avail, if death is here ? What 
this luxurious, idle ecstasy of being, if it ends thus ? Ah, well, 
there's a better side even here. This despised peon is made ma- 
jestic by "long-stretching death." He is now the equal of the 
duke and marquis that have lorded it over him so long and so 
haughtily. Oh, how one wished for power to speak to these breth- 
ren in a common sin and common grave, of a common deliverance 
from both sin and the grave ! Out of their own ranks the preach- 
ers are coming that shall speak the comforting experience, " Mourn 
not as others which have no hope." 

I found a proof of this that very evening in visiting the saloon 
where a congregation is gathered through the labors of Dr. Riley. 
About forty attend worship. It is growing gradually, and will, I 
trust, ere long be a power in all this region. 

At four in the morning we leave this garden-spot. Rattling up- 
ward, we soon enter a colder clime. Still up and still colder, so 
that blanket shawls and shivers are our portion. And the noon 
rest is employed in sunning one's self on the south side of the 
house, among the pigs and poultry, who always know the best place 
for comfort. 

An hour later and the descent into the Mexic valley relieves us 
of shawls and zerapes, and in two hours we are sweltering in sum- 
mer heat ; so easily do extremes meet in this extreme country. 



THE RETURN TO THE CITY. ' 247 

We look down on the sea of glass, mingled with fire, which Tjlazes 
over half the valley j the sea of glass, mingled with green, which 
covers more beautifully the other portions. The majestic snow- 
peaks shine forth their clearest and brightest. A Mexican saw- 
mill, off the road, but near the city, affords a quaint sight. The 
Spaniards stripped the plains and nearer mountains of wood, and 
so there is no need to-day of a more expensive mill than the old- 
fashioned handsaw pulled lazily along an occasional log. Our 
steam saw-mill rapacity will soon effect a like result in our own 
land. Popocatepetl looks quietly down on the quiet sawyer. 




PLANTING CORN. 



Down we hasten to the level plains and straight roads ; past 
Cherubusco, a flat field with a big church, around which the battle 
raged ; past the beautiful hacienda of San Juan de Dios (how 
pious are these names !), where men are planting corn in long rows, 
dressed all in white as snowy as the White Woman above them, 
a quaint procession — " there are forty hoeing like one " — over the 
long, shaded, half-well-roaded paseos, into busy burning Mexico. 
The city shows off best on this entrance, stretching wide and 
churchly along the open space. We have had all extremes in half 
a dozen hours. Our Garden in Eden is behind us. Our northern 
and better paradise before. Let us go. 



248 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

XII. 

LAST WALK LN MEXLCO. 

The Market-place. — The Murder-place. — Mexic Art and Music. — Aquarius. — 
Ruins, and how they were made. — A Funeral. — San Fernando Cemetery. — 
The English and American also. — Vaminos. 

The time draws near to leave this pleasant seat. The object 
of coming is so nearly completed that it can be safely intrusted to 
other hands. The beautiful cloisters of San Francisco, for which 
negotiations have been going forward for two months, are so near- 
ly ours that the risks of losing them are reduced to a minimum. 
The four parties holding claims upon them are all disposed of but 
one, the lessee, and the church has to take the risk of him, and for 
two months holds the titles of a theatre. But the wet season ex- 
hausts his vitahty, and he follows his fellows, and leaves the prop- 
erty for its proper occupants. Dr. Butler, the superintendent, ar- 
rives, and the route homeward begins to open. 

Walks must be frequent now, if we would see all the town, and 
even then, as in all towns, much will be left unseen. 
■ Let us go to the market-place.* This is usually the heart of the 
town. Here it is no exception. It comes close up to the palace 
and the plaza, being at the south-west end of the latter. It is 
made by the ending of the canal system in the very heart of the 
city. The canal makes the vegetable market, and that makes all 
the rest. It is the busiest hive of a market-place I ever saw. No 
European plaza, except on fair-days, no Baltimore street centre of 
a morning, or Cincinnati of a night, equals the crowd and chatter 
and push of this lively spot at almost every hour of the day. The 
boats' prows stuck in among the shops and stalls add to the excite- 
ment. Sunday morning is their fair, and such a crush and hubbub 

* See illustration, p. 1 12. 



IN THE MARKET. 



249 



are then encountered here as would forever cure the most radical 
anti - Sabbatarian of his desire to show his independence of the 
Scriptures by a desecration of the sacred day. 

As one has to go through it on his way to one of our churches, 
he gets a glimpse of its desecration in spite of himself. Each vo- 
cation has its allotted place. One narrow avenue is filled with 
coffin -makers, driving a brisk trade with their black boards, for 
black is the color of your "wooden jacket" in Mexico. A dozen 
shops and several dozen workmen make this dismal trade hilarious. 




SCENE IN MARKET. 



Another long alley is appropriated to the eating business, and 
great stew-pans over handfuls of coals keep hot the flesh -soups 
and bones ; while on the ground around sit groups of eaters, dip- 
ping their bread in the sop or sipping chocolate or coffee, each of 
which beverages they know how to compound excellently well. 

Across the town we find another plaza, less noisy daily, but 
which has seen greater crowds and heard greater noises than even 

17 



250 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

this noisiest and densest of markets. Pass down the Street of the 
Silversmiths to the Church of the Profesa, from whose top and 
whose street-corner we first contemplated the city. It is a majes- 
tic, cooling edifice. Its high roof and darkened light makes it one 
of the pleasantest of temples. Leave that and go straight across 
to the eastern side of the town. Behind the cathedral, half a 
mile away, you will see a long narrow square. On one side now is 
the custom-house ; at its lower end is a church, with its high fence. 
Before it are big wagons, with their triple set of mules resting by 
their side, and their dark muleteers lying beneath the wagons. 

In the centre of this square not many years ago stood an iron 
post. A dead wall on the side opposite the custom-house shows 
many a break in its surface, the size of a finger-end or larger. If, 
now, I were Victor Hugo, I should strike an attitude, and begin to 
make up the surprises. What mean these preparatory strokes? 
That now tame - looking building, which the government officials 
occupy, was once the Convent of Santo Domingo : that church 
fronting us was the temple of that name. 

Still no light ? he would say, in a line by itself. 

The order of Saint Dominic had the Inquisition in charge. Ah 
yes ! now it begins to glirnmer. That mass of buildings was the 
dungeon of the church. There its victims were confined, tried, 
racked, and killed, save such as were reserved for the extremest 
punishment of fire. That church was where its priests and prel- 
ates performed their stately services. That iron pillar in the cen- 
tre of the place, where the mule-wagons are, was where the burn- 
ings took place, for the repression of heresy. Mr. Black, long con- 
sul-general, a venerable gentleman of seventy, told me he saw the 
pillar when he first came here some fifty years ago, and its use for 
such purpose was never then denied. The Inquisition was then 
in full power, and had its authority been questioned, or that of the 
Church, its fires would have been relighted in this place. 

A few years since, in digging away some of these buildings to 
open and widen the streets, a prison was discovered in which four 
skeletons were found as they had been left to starve by their sa- 



SHORT SHRIFT. ■ 251 

cred superiors of the convent and the true faith. Before they fell ^ 
into dust their photograph was taken. It is a dreadful grave-stone 
of a dead system — dead, not because of its own desire to die, not 
because its managers had outgrown it, and voluntarily abandoned 
it, but because a power had grown up around and above it that 
compelled its abolition. It would break forth to-day had its 
Church her former power. It only awaits growth and opportu- 
nity to reproduce the starved inmates of an inwalled cell and the 
stake of fire. Such opportunity only Christianity can prevent* 

The fagot and the dungeon are gone, but the purpose remains. 
The power alone is wanting. No one would sooner light these 
fires over all the earth than the Infallible God now mumbling in 
the Vatican, or his chief-priests in Mexico. The murder of Ste- 
vens, the name and fate of the protomartyr, was caused and is ap- 
proved by the Church. A priest demanded it. No bishop or arch- 
bishop has disapproved it. No government, city, state, or national, 
dares punish the murderers. They are as safe as were those of the 
first Stephen from the Caiaphas and Herod of that day. Truly 
can we say of Christianity what Madame Roland said of liberty, 
" Oh, Christianity ! what crimes are committed in thy name !" 

But what are those spots on the wall ? 

They are where the balls, fired at criminals and revolutionists 
who were done to the death on this square, missed the victims and 
struck the wall behind them. It is the government place of exe- 
cution to this day. The shrive is short between conviction and 
death. A few hours and the criminal or innocent one, if con- 
demned, is marched hither, set up against the wall, and shot out 
of the body. All crimes have one punishment. Murder, robbery, 
kidnaping, horse-stealing, treason, revolution, almost petty larceny, 
receives swift verdict and execution. The place is ghostly in the 
bustle of midday. Let us away to more cheerful sights. 

One thing surprised me above all others in Mexico : its attain- 
ment and progress in art. 

Come down below the plaza, by the eastern side of the palace 

* See illustrations, pages 186, 188. 



252 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

and the post-office, and you see a large building devoted to art. 
The galleries are longer and fuller than any others on this conti- 
nent. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston are far below Mexico 
in these treasures. They occupy some eight or ten long rooms, 
and are of every age from the time of the conquest until now. 
Not a few of them are of much merit. They even claim Murillos 
among the spoils of the convents that have been transferred hither. 

Modern art is not wanting, nor inferior. Seldom can you see 
on European walls more- vigorous paintings than those of Noah 
and his family receiving the dove. It is a remarkable set of fig- 
ures, every one a study, every one a life. Columbus contemplating 
the sea is a superb piece of work. Dante and Virgil looking into 
hell is awfully vivid. Mr. Seward expressed a desire for a copy 
of this masterly work. Several Ishmaels and Hagars are on the 
walls. It seems a favorite theme. Best of all, for drawing and ef- 
fective handling of colors, is the Dead Monk. Rembrandt rare- 
ly exceeded it. A group of monks hang over a dead brother. 
Their gray cowls and robes, their scared and skeleton faces, their 
lights dimly glowing from the tapers in their hands, which are the 
only illumination of the room, and the dead prone in the midst the 
only calm one ; these make a ghastly picture of great power and 
tenderness. 

The galleries of sculpture are less advanced. Most of the 
groups are in plaster, money being wanted to put them into stone. 

What is better than the galleries is the school of art. You see 
in several rooms, as you pass through and along the corridors, quite 
a string of youths, bending over their drawing-books and canvas. 
They are fine-looking lads of all shades and blood : Spanish, Az- 
tec, and all between. They have as instructors the best artists of 
the city, and they are worthy of the time and cost lavished upon 
them. When shall our America give her lads equal opportunity.^ 
The best artists of our chief cities would be glad to render such 
service, and many a noble youth would be glad to have it ren- 
dered. What school board will be the first to open a real school 
of art ? When that is done, we shall find our starveling galleries 



THE AZTEC BAND. 253 

growing to fair and full proportions, and our larger and smaller 
cities alike enjoying real genius, expressed in real forms of art. 

That there is a desire for this, the feeble attempts of girls' board- 
ing-schools and the sometimes successful struggles of young men, 
bear abundant evidence. Could these girls, have competent teach- 
ers, and these boys fair educational opportunities, there would be 
as grand an accession to our artistic force, as our musical conserv- 
atories, under the best professors of that art, have added to our 
musical culture. By as much as a permanent picture surpasses a 
burst of song, by so much will the school of painting excel that of 
music. Who will start a conservatory of art ? 

The Aztec does not neglect music. If you will come to the 
plaza on one of these superb, moonlight nights, when it seems as 
if the purity of the atmosphere brought you nigh the silver orb 
(perhaps it is the silvery soil that does it), and the air is full of 
tremulous lustre. The brown Indian band take their stand on the 
raised round centre of the square. There is not a white, hardly a 
mixed blood among them. Pure Aztecs these. They begin. Did 
you ever hear more delicate notes, more softly rendered ? The 
combinations are equally rich. They are not mere melody, but 
masterly intervolutions of harmony. Their touch is soft, and swift, 
and strong. They catch the soul of the music, and bring it palpi- 
tating before you. The moon seems to shed a directer ray. No 
Venetian night on the Plaza of San Marco ever excels these torrid- 
temperate perfections of moonlight and melody. The pieces are 
not familiar, and, I reckon, are original. If they are, then the two- 
fold gift of utterance and composition is theirs. The band would 
have won loudest applause if it had appeared at the Jubilee. Let 
Gilmore remember them in his Centennial Reunion, when all the 
world shall gather in Philadelphia, and he shall bring forth his 
bands and choruses for their delight. The Aztec band of Mexico 
will make French and German, English and Yankee, look to their 
laurels. 

The schools of the city are in some respects superior to those 
of America. A large number of these are kept up by the Free- 



254 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

masons. One of these I visited, in an old convent, which was 
granted it by the State. The scholars were taught French from 
cards hung round the room, and primers, and petite story-books. 
Our schools could and should make the youngest children conver- 
sant with this and the German language. It is far better to learn 
a language, which a child can easily learn to speak and read, than 
to study grammar, which an adult rarely knows, and which it is 
impossible for a child to understand. 

Here, too, all the girls study book-keeping. Their penmanship 
is exquisite, and they will thus get openings to fields of labor hith- 
erto denied them. They also are taught needle-work, and so made 
useful for the old as well as the new. Over three thousand pupils 
are studying English in the public and private schools. That is a 
sign of the influence of our language. The French has fallen out 
of favor since their invasion of the country. Our invasion seems 
to have made our tongue the more popular. It is probably be- 
cause of the diffusion of this language, and the consciousness of its 
growing superiority as a world-tongue, and especially because of 
its utility as a neighbor-tongue, that it has such pre-eminence in 
these public schools. 

The city has a school of mines, with abundant specimens of the 
wonderful treasures of the country. It has also marble works, 
where you see the rare marbles of the land, translucent, transpar- 
ent almost, full of as rich variations as a polished mahogany knot; 
a future article of great commercial value. 

As we are walking, you notice that man with a double burden, 
a strap going over his head in such a way that he carries a big jar 
before him and a bigger vase behind. He is the water-carrier — 
the institution of the city next to the lottery-ticket vender. The 
aqueducts flow into cisterns, like that of Vera Cruz, situated in the 
courts of houses ; not every house, but as frequently as hydrants 
in our cities. These aquarii take the water from these reservoirs 
and carry it from door to door. A cuartillia a day, or a few tlaquas, 
will supply a family its daily need. His business is steady. De- 
sierto comes thus to town, and its purveyors carry it to every door. 



THE OPENING OF STREETS. 



255 



One thing strikes us in 
all this walk over the city 
— the multiplicity of ruins. 
It is as full of ruins as 
Rome or Jerusalem. Great 
dust-heaps of vanished pop- 
ulations are on the northern 
borders. Cleft walls high 
and thick are all through 
the main thoroughfares. 
This is a feature of Mexico 
which did not exist twenty 
years ago. Then there were 
no ruins, except those of lib- 
erty and religion. The fall 
of the Church as a political 
governing power cut open 
the streets and laid low the 
convents. Comonfort initi- 
ated this work.. The American war had left the Bible and the 
light of Protestant Christianity to leaven the hard lump of antique 
superstition. It showed its leavening influence first in the opening 
of streets. At that time a large number of monasteries existed in 
the city. They covered from five to twenty acres. Of course they 
crossed the main thoroughfares everywhere, and interfered badly 
with the city's progress. They possessed gardens, parks, deep 
arcades around marble-pillared patios, dormitories, libraries, chap- 
els, and magnificent churches. Their very halls of flagellation 
were richly bedight. 

The convents St. Augustine, St. Dominic, and many others, were 
first emptied of their occupants. Friars and nuns were objects of 
ridicule. And then, if new streets were needed, the buildings were 
cut in twain. The chief of these was the Convent of San Francisco. 
It was the oldest and richest. None covered so large a space, or 
was so variedly and richly endowed. It was founded by a natural 




A WATER-CARRIER. 



256 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

son of Charles V., and held for centuries the chief place in the re- 
gards of the citizens. It crossed the street parallel with the main 
thoroughfare. Comonfort desired to cut his way through it. The 
archbishop refused. It was sacred soil. We all know how tena- 
cious some in our own land have been of sacred soil. That was 
sacredly sacred. The State demanded passage. The Church re- 
fused. The State prepared to force it. The Church prepared to 
poison or stiletto the State. Each chief chose his appropriate 
weapons. But one day, before the Church had arranged to stop 
the State by stopping the breath of its chief, Comonfort cut his 
way through, and called the street " Calle de Independenzia " (the 
Street of Independence). 

The convent was cut in twain, like the vail of the Temple, from 
the top to the bottom. The old dispensation closed, the new be- 
gan. Ten years passed, and all convents, and even churches, pass- 
ed into the power of the State, and the city was full of ruins of a 
system and of its dwelling-places. 

Part of this convent is occupied by the Church of Jesus, the first 
Protestant chapel in Mexico. The church is to be occupied by 
the same society. The cloisters have come into possession of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, and have been fitted up for a chapel. 
The deep arcades are shut out by hangings, and the area alone is 
appropriated to church uses. The exquisite pillars of polished 
stone are more beautiful than the spiral columns of the cloisters 
of San Juan de Lateran at Rome. It is said to be a remnant of 
Montezuma's palace. Its delicacy and richness seem more Euro- 
pean than Aztec. It is a worthy temple for the better faith. 

Our long and varied walk must come to an end. Where can it 
end more appropriately than where all walks end — at the grave ? 
Do you see that procession ? Strangely enough, the hearse follows 
the coffin. The body is borne on the shoulders of men. Why is 
this ? It is a ^'■custom de la pais, ^^ as they say here, a custom of the 
country. To show their regard for the departed, they take the 
body on their own shoulders forth to burial. It is a very plaintive 
and pretty custom. 



A REMINISCENCE OF 1824. 257 

One death I witnessed. Mr, Heaven, an Englishman long in the 
country, with a native wife, was gasping his last as I called with 
Dr. Cooper to see him. He remembered then his home faith. 
Asking him if his feet were on the Rock of Ages, he replied, "Yes ! 
Not on the rock of Peter." 

The next day we took him to the English cemetery. The sun 
shone bright and warm ; the fields looked green and glad ; gerani- 
ums in abundance reddened the parks with their blossoms. The 
trees were leafy as in June ; every thing was alive but this man, 
who is of the head of every thing. 

No female member of the family appeared at the house or the 
grave. Four servants of the undertaker carried out his body, fol- 
lowed by three ministers and one Methodist layman. Carriages 
took the gentlemen friends to the cemetery, and there a large crowd 
listened to the impressive service, most of whom probably had nev- 
er before heard Scriptures read or prayers offered in their own lan- 
guage. May the seed sown at that grave's mouth bring forth abun- 
dantly for the regeneration of this land ! 

Among those present was the first man who ever read the Prot- 
estant burial-service over a dead body in this land : Mr. Black, the 
venerable ex-consul. He said that in 1824 an American, a shoe- 
maker, was sitting in his shop-door on the plaza before the Cathe- 
dral. The procession of the Host passed by : the carrying of the 
altar, crucifix, and holy water to a dying man. He arose and knelt 
in his chair. A Mexican, passing by, knelt in his door-way, and 
ordered the American to get down on the floor on his knees. This 
was curtly refused. The Mexican instantly drew his sword and 
thrust it through the heart of the American. 

There was intense excitement, Mr. Black, then a young travel- 
er visiting the land, determined he should have a Christian burial. 
He got a Prayer-book, and accompanied the body to the grave, 
which was allowed to be dug in the gardens of Chapultepec. 
Stones were hurled at the procession, and one grazed across his 
chest as he was reading the service. They dug up his body and 
rifled it, and left it stripped on the ground. It was reburied, and 



258 " OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

remained so, perhaps because the ritual was not read over it a 
second time. That was the first time the Protestant service 
was ever employed in this city at a burial ; this morning was the 
latest. 

Great have been the changes in this country since that hour. 
The uplifted hats of all that stood in the street or passed by when 
the body was being brought out, and of many whom the procession 
passed, showed how great the change of feeling toward their breth- 
ren of other communions. May each land and all churches of Je- 
sus Christ more and more fulfill the Divine pleasure, so that of all 
people it may be truly said, " Whether living or dying, we are the 
Lord's !" 

The chief national grave-yard is in the grounds of the San Fer- 
nando Church. This church is on the Street of San Cosme, not 
far from the Alameda. The tombs of dead presidents, many, are 
here. Quite stately affairs some of them, standing in the open 
space, while the walls about the inclosure are filled with cells that 
are occupied only five short years by the dead inhabitant. Unless 
"Propriedad" is written over it, the slumberer is disturbed, if not 
awakened, at the end of that little time, taken out, turned to dustier 
dust by the sexton in a neighboring court, or patio, and either 
thrust (what is left of him) into a graye at last, or laid up on a 
shelf. Sometimes his skull and other bones are set off with flow- 
ers and other ghastly adornings. 

It is money that makes this dire necessity. The Church gets fif- 
ty dollars for a five years' lease, and several hundreds for a perma- 
nent location. Next to the utter absence of all Christian faith on 
these square slabs, is this horrid unchristian unburial. In a coun- 
try where acres unbounded are fit only for the sexton's spade, and 
where churches and ceremonies abound, such parsimony and infi- 
delity are inexcusable. Among the permanently buried of the 
patio are some half-dozen presidents, and generals, and cabinet 
officers, and grandees many. 

Guerro is here, the first revolutionist, who, failing to get votes 
enough, took to arms, and was shot, as he deserved. A brave, lib- 



FROM GRAVE TO GAY. 259 

eral, progressive man, who failed to see that submitting to a wrong 
ruler was the best way to get a right one. 

Miramon is here, who was shot with Maximilian, and whom the 
emperor compelled to take the post of honor, the centre of the 
group, on that sad day. Juarez, who shot him, lies not far away, 
each as quiet now, as fierce and hostile then. Saragossa, the pop- 
ular general who drove the French from Puebla, is here, only a 
year elapsing after that victory before death conquered him, Com- 
onfort, who began the revolution against the Church, is in the cen- 
tre, one of the ablest presidents the country has ever had. The 
brother of the present President, a powerful leader himself of the 
State, is here. My Old Mortality guide through this realm was the 
American minister, who had known many of them, as almost all 
had been placed here in the last few years. Most of these leaders 
died in their boots, died with their feet warm, as the witty Isaac O. 
Barnes said John Rogers did. It matters not how. Enough that 
they died. Finis is finis. 

How mocking is life in such a place ! How easy, it would seem, 
it must be to have all ambition and life-greed of every sort 

" Cooled, like lust, in the chill of the grave." 

Yet we walk out from this dusty assemblage of the leaders of this 
nation, and in an instant are among the hot and hasting crowds 
of the public thoroughfare ; horse rail-cars are flying by ; they fly, 
and do not creep here, as in all the United States ; the only thing 
that does creep there, except snakes and babies. Coaches and 
horsemen, and water-carriers and other carters, whose shoulders 
and foreheads are loaded. with huge weights, every body and thing, 
seems as if it would never die. Both are right. Live while you 
live, and yet live so as to be ready for this sure summons. 

If we still walk on up the San Cosme road, we shall come, after 
a mile or more, to where the aqueduct suddenly wheels westward, 
and turns its face toward Chapultepec. Opposite this turn you 
see the shaded gate-way of the English cemetery. The American 
adjoins. Each is neatly kept ; but the English had a prettier ar- 



2 6o OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

ray of shrubs and trees and flowers, because they took more pains, 
or because they have more, and more wealthy, residents here, or 
because they have a more cultured taste for landscape adorning. 
An improvement has since been made, under the direction of our 
consul-general, in the American grounds, which now vie with, if 
they do not surpass, those of their elder brothers. They are get- 
ting sadly populous, but still remain undisturbed, a grave rebuke 
to the loose Latin notions concerning the dead, whose temporar}- 
permission to occupy their niches in the wall is a sad proof of the 
powerlessness of their faith. Their cold mottoes are sadder, for a 
glimpse or glow of faith, such as makes the underground catacombs 
light, rarely finds a place on their transient slab. Our higher faith 
strikes a higher note even here, and the grave of Protestantism is 
a proof of its superiority. 

Inside the American is a monument to our soldiers who fell be- 
fore Mexico. It is somewhat touched with time, and needs a little 
attention on the part of our officials or visitors. 

AVe must give up our pleasant walks and rides about this pleas- 
ant capital. It is a long respite to ceaseless wanderings, this two 
months in one place. This room is almost home-like, and the live- 
ly little landlady, almost one's mother. True, not a few long excur- 
sions have been made in important directions ; two last week, four 
days in one, and a day and a half the other. But the flight back 
has made this spot otily the more like home. It must be left, 
hotel, streets, city, environs, friends not a few, and foes none at all. 

Being told that poison, assassination, kidnaping, robber}^, every 
thing baleful was my certain portion if I set foot in this city, under 
my own name or in any incognito, I must bear testimony to the 
contrary experience every time. 

In a hotel owned or managed by a priest, I have had the best 
of treatment. Remember the Hotel Gillow, ye who turn your feet 
hither. 

Daily dining with an earnest Romanist and distinguished officer 
in the United States Army, I have met him only in pleasant con- 
flict on religious questions, and have had many proofs of his gen- 



MEXICAN HOSPITALITY. 



261 




soldiers' monument in the AMERICAN CEMETERY. 



erosity and gentlemanliness. At the table of the American minis- 
ter I have met as devoted a Romanist (who boasts of being a pa 
pist) as ever bowed the knee to the Virgin of Guadalupe, or be- 
lieved in that miraculous folly ; yet there was little of the inquisi- 
tion in that inquisitress. 

We could feel as safe in these devout hands as in those of their 
own brethren. There will no doubt be trouble and conflict in the 
outer settlements, but the only danger at the capital is too warm a 
welcome. Hannibal fell at Cannae, under the luxuries of Roman 
hospitality. The Church should beware lest like Roman hospital- 
ity here destroy the courage to renew this land in holiness. 

For that it needs such renewal, there is proof on every hand. 
The people are religious, but not in the true faith, nor with the 
true life. General education, enterprise, the uplifting of the toiling 



262 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

masses — these are absent. Especially is experimental faith, the 
personal, joyous experience of believers, gone. Nay, it never came. 
The Church needs renovation. A monopoly of religion is as dan- 
gerous as a monopoly of inferior businesses — the more dangerous ; 
infinitely more. The Roman Catholic Church has suffered from 
monopoly. It is bestirring itself as never before, because of the 
invasion of other churches. It knov^^s the talk about its being the 
exclusive Church is all humbug; that the other ecclesiastical ex- 
pression of Christianity is as truly divine as any it claims from a 
Peter that never vi^as at Rome, and a. Church that has been histor- 
ically the most imperfect of any that has existed. 

We are needed. We are welcomed by the people, and shall yet 
be by the priests. All American churches are needed. The idea 
that it is sectarian for these churches to come here in their own 
proper form, is another folly more foolish than the Romanist coun- 
terpart, because more inconsistent with the history of these churches. 
Come in your own clothes, not dressed as Joseph or a harlequin. 
Come as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and 
Congregation alists ; the five fingers (for the thumb is a finger) that 
make up the right hand that Christ stretches out for the salvation 
of the world. Let not the hand be doubled up against itself, nor 
even against that left hand of superstition and irrational rational- 
ism which so often unites to smite the Lord's right hand. Use 
your own forces in your own way, and God will give the in- 
crease. 

That such increase is certain, I have no doubt. My stay here 
has convinced me that this is a very open field ; that many are 
waiting our coming ; that if the Church takes possession of it bold- 
ly and liberally, she will have instant and large reward. May her 
faith and works be adequate to the signs of the Lord's will and 
pleasure. Let her not smite the ground timidly, and only thrice ; 
but in such abundance of prayers and means as shall show^ how 
strong is her faith, how ardent her love for her Saviour and her 
brethren. He that soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly ; but 
he that soweth bountifully, shall reap also bountifully. Let her so 



J 



GOOD-BYE TO THE CAPITAL. 263 

SOW that her harvest may be plenteous of saved souls and a saved 
land. 

In this calm, sweet summer night I bid a Mexican adios, an En- 
glish good-bye — God be with you — to this fair city, beautiful for sit- 
uation, and which may yet be the joy of the whole earth. To my 
host, my friends, my brethren, adieu. To-morrow for the North, 
and a twenty days' long, long ride on a tempestuous diligence. 
Vaminos ! 



BOOK III. 

FROM MEXICO TO MATAMORAS. 



OFF FOR QUERETARO. ■ 267 



I. 

TO QUERETARO. 

The Start. — First and last Church in the City. — The Game-cocks. — First Scare. 
— Guatitlan again. — Barrenness. — Gambling and Tortilla-making. — Descent 
to Tula. — A Bit of English Landscape. — Tula. — Hunt for a Statue. — A sil- 
ver Heavens and Earth. — Juelites. — Mountains and a mounting Sun. — Vista 
Hermosa. — Napola. — A stone Town. — An Interior. — The Stables. — Sombrero 
Walls. — Eagle Tavern. — Playing with the Children. — Gamboling versus 
Gambling. — Cazadero, the Bull Prairie. — Hacienda of Palmillas. — Blacksmith 
Idolatry. — Misterio de la Santissima Trinidad. — 'Tother Side up. — Descent 
into the Valley of San Juan. — Lone yellow Cone. — Longfellow and Homer. 
— Elysium after much Turmoil. — A Dissertation on Beggars. — A Market Um- 
brella. — In Perils among Robbers. — The beautiful Valley of San Juan. — Col- 
orado. — A Turner Sunset. — Sight of Queretaro. — The Aqueduct. — The Bed.^ 

Do you want a trip of twenty days and twelve hundred miles in 
a stage-coach, through charming scenery, the ride made piquant 
with possible kidnapings, robbings, slaughters, and such like pleas- 
antries.-* Then come to the office of the Diligence Company, in 
the Street of Independence, back of the Hotel Iturbide, and get 
your billet and place. The ticket will cost you ninety-nine dollars. 
You can deposit another hundred or two if you wish, and receive 
a bill of credit, on which you can draw every night, where the coach 
stops, of an administrador, or agent, of the company. This avoids 
the necessity of carrying much silver about 3'ou, and so of tempt- 
ing overmuch the rapacity of the robbers among whom your jour- 
ney lies. A few dollars it is desirable to carry with you in order 
to satisfy them partially for their trouble in stopping and searching 
you, and to prevent their giving you their pistol because of your 
refusal to give them your pistoles. If they should rob you of your 
bill of credit, you can telegraph back the fact, prevent its further 
use, and get a nev.^ one covering the amount then undrawn. 



268 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Armed with the ticket and the bill of credit, and with no other 
weapons, I take my seat in the coach. It is number one, the best 
back seat. I am the only through passenger from the city to the 
northernmost port. Three friends were there to see me off. One, 
a Mexican, parted with me in true compadre style, hugging and kiss- 
ing, which were as compadrially returned. Three months had 
made a cold Yankee into quite a warm Mexican. It is a delicious 
morning in March ; but as all mornings here are delicious, the re- 
mark is superfluous. The March wind is a June zephyr, and " De- 
cember's as pleasant as May." The sun is not quite up, but the 
sky is gray with his sub-horizon radiance. The streets are silent 
and empty but for the rattle of the coach, which makes all the more 
noise seemingly because of the surrounding stillness. 

We pass the first church built by Cortez.* It is well in the fields 
to-day, and only frequented by a few poor neighbors. Close by it 
is the penitentiary, and here military and other executions frequent- 
ly occur. Death is the regular punishment. A captain, a day or 
two before, insulted his superior, was marched out here of a morn- 
ing, and shot. Three men robbed a carriage on the paseo, and, as 
soon as captured and condemned, were shot. Four kidnapers of a 
gentleman in the city were treated with like summary justice. The 
action of General Burriel is after the fashion of the race : drum- 
head court-martial and instant execution. 

The church is surrounded by heaps of ruined huts, the adobe 
brick dissolving into its original dust. Mexico looks like Rome, 
half a ruin, both in its central streets, where convent ruins abound, 
and in these dust heaps, black and homeless, that fill up its eastern 
sections. We pass the gate and emerge on a hard pike, which 
leads to Tolu, about sixty miles away. We traverse broad hacien- 
das belonging to Mexican gentlemen, devoted chiefly to the culture 
of the maguey. 

The first village is like most we pass — a string of whitewashed 
huts flush with the roadway, no sidewalk coming between the door 
and the rider. This one, unlike the others, is largely occupied with 

* See illustration, page 195. 



THE VALLEY OF GUATITLAN. . 269 

game-cocks. A breeder of them is giving his brood the early 
morning air. They stand on a raised seat running along the front 
of his cabin, prevented from general perambulation by a fastening 
to the foot. The trainer is teaching the young ones how to fight, 
holding a gray one up to a black beauty, and making each strike 
the other artistically. They are splendid birds, putting to shame 
the Shanghais and other gentry of bloodless and fightless fame. 
But even if of a fighting race, they have to be taught to bite and 
devour each other, and patiently taught. So brave nations drill 
their braver soldiers to fight, and then declare their natural ani- 
mosity causes war. 

My first scare occurs just out of this gamy town. A company 
of horsemen come riding down on us from a rocky hill-slope up 
which our half-sick mules must slowly pull, for the epizootic is in 
the land, and I take this thousand-mile ride and risk with that ac- 
companiment. The- gay-caparisoned riders, as they appear wrap- 
ped in their red and blue zerapes, are sufficiently brigandish to stir 
the fever in the timid blood. No weapon was mine save my moth- 
er-wit, and that was an exceeding dull weapon, and would be very 
clumsily used in the unknown tongue. So I wait patiently the 
coming of the foe. On they drive, nearer and nearer to us, on us, 
past us. "Adios " is the only shot they fire. They are muleteers 
from Chihuahua and Durango, going to town, a long three weeks' 
trip, to dispose of a few sorry mules. Time is of no value here. 
Two months and twenty dollars profit are good equivalents. Thus 
ends our every fright the whole journey through. 

The Valley of Guatitlan is entered — a broad, pleasant country, 
well cultured, and inclosed with bare brown hills. At Lecheria, or 
Milk-place, we change one set of eight sick mules for another. 

Guatitlan is galloped through, or would have been had the mules 
been well. The San Pedro hotel looks as familiar and uninviting 
as ever. I shiver as I think of that den where, like Bunyan's Pil- 
grim, I laid me down, but, unlike him, did not get a good sleep or 
dream. The town is large. Protestant service has been held here, 
and will be again. 



270 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



Tecepitlan appears on the left, embosomed in trees, at the base 
of hills — a city of priests, all Church property, till the day of ven- 
geance came : now a city of poverty and fanaticism. Cyotepec, a 
pretty village, is passed ; and ten miles from Guatitlan we stop to 
breakfast at Huahuatoca, a sleepy little town, but with a good ta- 
ble. I can not promise for the correctness of this spelling. It is 
phonetic, and that should be the only way to spell. 




CACTUS, AND WOMAN KNEADING TORTILLAS. 

Now comes barrenness of barrenness. For ten leagues, or near- 
ly thirty miles, all is a wilderness. Rocks lie loose over the earth, 
which is baked, and hard, and worthless. Half-way, we change 
horses at a hacienda. 

I watch the men gamble for cents, and the women make tortil- 
las. The former bet on two who pitch, putting up eight or ten cen- 
tavos on the throw. The latter are more sensible in their voca- 



AN OLD TOWN. 2^1 

tion. They do not grind the maize, but soften it by potash, pulp 
it, a'nd then prepare it for cooking. A smooth stone, inclined 
downward, two feet long, is the table. Behind it, on the ground, 
kneels the lady of the house. She rolls out the soft dough with a 
stone roller, takes up some of it, pats it and repats it over and over, 
and lays it on a brazier — a large, slightly -hollowed dish, over a 
small fire kept up by dried maguey leaves. The cakes look nice 
in the making, and do not taste bad. 

The rest of the ride is through softer scenery — rough along the 
roadside, but opening into broad fields and hollows of rich earth 
and culture. Zumpango and its lake lie over to the right or north, 
a little, nice town, and a handsome water. To the left you see a 
deep vale, crowded with trees. The stage turns toward it almost 
by instinct. We wind down, and enter among green fields and 
trees, all out in their new spring attire. A square in a preliminary 
village, called Santa Maria, is especially charming. On we drive 
amidst these tender and brilliant fields and foliage, the barley a 
foot high, the grass velvety, and ash and oak superb in volume 
and color. The river Tula is crossed, English in its quiet, shallow- 
ness, and munificence of trees ; and we put our sick mules to the 
jump, and run through the plaza of Tula. This is a town not less 
than a thousand years old. It was settled by the Toltecs in the 
eighth century. Stone pillars still attest their presence and power. 
It was too late to visit them ; but one called Malinche was pointed 
out to me in a hill-side overhanging the green hollow. I tried to 
get a boy to go with me, but failed ; so I started alone. 

The country always whips the town when brought into fair com- 
petition. As I strolled through these rural lanes, with their fresh 
fields and pastures, even their trees all in their best attire, I thought 
" Mexico is cheap to this." I crossed a bridge which had little open- 
ings on each side, with iron railings, to let you look down into the 
stream. What bridge in America is equally excellent? Not one 
of our costly spans has a place for rest and observation. Will the 
East River be thus favored ? If it is, few spots for rest and obser- 
vation will be more popular. 



272 . OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

I climbed the hill where the white face of the Toltec Malinche 
had been marked out to me. I could not find it. A ghost of the 
ages it represents, like all other ghosts, it flies on near approach. 
The sun went down, the moon came up, each brilliant in its work 
and way. But Malinche hid her white face before the white face 
of the moon among the tall cacti of the hills, and I came back dis- 
appointed to my hotel. Several huge gray shafts in its patio carved 
over (specimens of the pinea I found not) solaced me for my loss. 

At two o'clock in the morning I was awakened by the mozo, as 
the house or body servant is called, of the Casa de Diligencias. 
The moon was up, and the sky, like the earth under it, was full of 
silver. A cup of excellent coffee and a fresh sweet roll, and I am 
safely stowed away in the coach. Fortunately, the whole back seat 
is mine, so that I can take my ease, if any ease can be taken in this 
peripatetic inn. The mules leap out of the court-yard and whirl 
away, crazy as the Pegasus of a new-fledged poet. 

The cold is sharp, and the road rough, rougher, roughest. But 
sleep is too much for any road, and, lying on a pillow of coats, with 
a shawl for a blanket, I am tossed unconsciously for three solid 
hours j unconscious save for the cold that bites the toes, and which 
a redistribution of the shawl causes to retreat. The sun is up, and 
a hill-top station (also up), for changing the mules, gets me up. I 
get out, stretch legs, and renew coifee. It is called Juelites (pro- 
nounced Wheyletes), the name of an herb the Indians eat, which is 
worse of smell than garlic. These half dozen " huts of stone " are 
such as Dr. Holmes would not be content with, I fear, despite his 
declaration to the contrary. There is existence here, and that only. 
Yet a school is held here, and some day the newspaper and the 
true Church will follow, and the hut of barbarism give way to the 
cottage of civilization, which has not been the case these three hun- 
dred and fifty years, in which a spurious Christianity has subdued, 
not elevated, .this people. 

The land slopes softly and prettily. The fields are frosty, the 
first I have seen, with one exception, all this winter ; each was a 
light September frost. They are good for grazing, and their hoi- 



A TWICE-BURNED TOWN. ■ 273 

lows ample for grain. There is no need of poverty and degrada- 
tion so unspeakable. The hills, black, blue, and purple, and, when 
the sun lights them, golden-brown, as everywhere in Mexico, " brown 
in the shadow, golden in the sun," like Willis's beloved's tresses, 
form a grand background, the rising sun being in this case a grand- 
er background to the hills. 

Our mules fly as fast as the fearful road and a partial epizootic 
will let them, to the stone -house village of Napola. Before we 
reach it, we note the superb roll of the land. It sweeps away in 
majestic breadth, black with the plow, or awaiting in yellow dry- 
ness the near approaching rains that shall set every germ alive, A 
hacienda in the heart of this grand landscape is rightly called 
"Vista Hermosa" (view beautiful). I had never seen one prettier. 
Nor did it lose its beauty because a tiny lake lay at the bottom of 
the valley, flashing in the morning rays. Some upper Minnesota 
views were not unlike it, only those lacked the mountains, a lack 
indeed. 

The town disenchants you. Man is far below nature. It was 
burned twice by the French in their marches to and fro in the 
land, either because it did not give good enough pulqui or not 
enough of it, for their thirsty needs, or because it harbored republic- 
ans and patriots, and politica;l Protestants, who resisted a triumph- 
ing foreign Church and army and tongue. "America for Ameri- 
cans," native or adopted, the motto of these United States, as well 
as those of the North, brought wrath upon Napola. It seems de- 
termined not to be caught that way again ; for it rebuilt its town 
of stone. Not a stick in it that I could see, except the few that 
formed the doors. The stones are laid neatly, and even ornament- 
ally in some cases, and then plastered over, so as to give a uniform 
whiteness when finished ; for this city, unlike some in the West, 
and many in this country, can not be said to be finished. It has 
been finished twice in another way, and that gives it a chance to 
be a-growing again. Its name signifies cactus, and this hardy and 
useful tree is growing in orchards among its rocks. So it grows 
everywhere, and is well called the national tree. 



2 74 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Some of the stone cabins are of respectable height and size ; 
but quite a number are of a type too common in the land. Look 
in at this door, or hole in the wall, for door I saw not. It is four or 
five feet by two. The room is six feet by eight, short. The floor 
is of stone, well swept and clean. Against the back wall kneels a 
comely-looking, youngish housewife, of twenty or thereabouts, over 
a sloping stone, on which she is kneading her tortilla dough. 

It is rolled out by a stone roller about the size and shape of the 
kneading-pin the women of the North employ. A pile unfinished 
lies at the upper end of the stone ; the roller flattens and curls the 
lower portion into thin rolls, which drop off into a small bread- 
trough at the foot of the stone. This afterward she takes and pats 
in her hands several times, and lays it on the slightly hollowed fry- 
ing-pan that stands near, in the corner of this room. It is a pleas- 
ant sight and sound, the slapping the dough and frying the cakes. 

This is their only work almost, except that of washing, which is 
very similar, being also done over a smooth sloping stone, by the 
side of running water, with profusion of slapping, soapijig, and 
rinsing, but with no boiling, except of the washer-women in the hot 
sun. They vary making tortillas and washing with combing their 
long black hair, and cleaning it of its contents, and with affection- 
ate attentions of like sort to their friends and family. Besides the 
tortilla-trough and stone and pan, there are in this room half a doz- 
en earthen pots and vessels of various sizes for culinary purposes. 
I hardly saw aught else. No chair, no table, no book, no paper, 
no bed — strangest of all, no looking-glass. Six feet by eight of 
space, walled in on every side, with only this hole for entrance, and 
the young matron as cheerful as if she were the wife of Lerdo. 

You get an idea here also of the stables of the land. The burn- 
ing of this town has compelled the erection of new stables. There 
is one thing always sure of good treatment in Mexico : the horse. 
House and wife and children may go uncared for, but not the 
horse. Look at this stable of the Diligence Company. Almost 
four hundred feet square is it. Along one side stables are built 
over three hundred feet long. The face of the stable, where the 



FENCE-BUILDING. . 275 

Stall is, is a dead wall against the street. The court side is built 
up four feet of stone and plaster. Every few feet round pillars, 
eighteen inches through, rise from this wall to support the roof, 
which depends courtward, leaving the stall higher at the horse's 
head, and thus giving him air. The space between the stone wall 
and the top of the pillars which support the roof is left open, thus 
securing constant ventilation. The horses are not stalled in here 
as in their boxes in the North, and as men are in oyster saloons. 
All the space is open from end to end. There is ample room be- 
hind them and around them, and air as good as a pasture affords. 
It seems to me a great improvement on our narrow-boarded stalls, 
without liberty and without air. The mules and horses are so 
tethered that they can not disturb each other, and yet the whole 
stable and court is as sweet and wholesome as an orchard. Here, 
too, we note another peculiarity in the building of the stone walls. 
They make a science of this here, for stone is an incumbrance of 
the land as much as in New England, or as trees are in Wisconsin. 
They put them into fences which beat New England's " all hol- 
low." They make these walls very high — six to eight feet, and 
very broad — three to five. They put the small stones at the bot- 
tom, and not less than four feet up. Then they put on the big 
rocks. These big stones overlap the base with their rough edges, 
and make the wall look like a trim lad with a huge, tall, ragged 
sombrero. The lower half is very compact and comely ; the up- 
per very rough, yet strong. This is probably a protection, for the 
rough tall top stones are not so easily surmounted or dismounted. 
Where these are not sufficiently defensive, thorns are thrust into 
the upper tier to keep the robbing boys , and men from the in- 
closed gardens. Sometimes they build the walls lower and of 
Yankee fashion, and once I saw them reduced to our narrow mean- 
ness of a single row of stones ; but that wall was nearly all down, 
and soon disappeared, leaving the field open to every beast and 
boy. The only walls that were walls were the handsome struc- 
tures built after the sombrero pattern. 

The landscape lies rich and warm all the next posta to Venta 



276 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Aguilar (or Eagle Tavern), which is only a stage-house, and no 
village. Here I vary the monotony of waiting for the change of 
mules with helping three little girls, from three to five years old, 
make tortillas. They are pretty, laughing imps, brown of face, 
black of eye and hair, and would be called handsome by any moth- 
er or aunt of them, and will be by some not thus related not ten 
years hence. 

They had a small piece of wood for the hearth, a little ground 
straw for the fuel, two or three black flakes of mud for the cakes, 
and a bit of earthenware for the frying-pan. The youngest and 
brightest of the three told me very chattingly what she wished 
to do. So, after all was in place, I astonished her by lighting a 
match and proceeding to kindle her fire. This was making the 
ideal into the actual a little too rapidly, and they declined the of- 
fered blaze. The mother came in from the next hut, and laughed 
with the children to see such a new friend of the family. Having 
been ordered by the doctor, a few years since, when prostrated 
with overwork, to play with the children, I am not quite weaned 
from that pleasurable medicine yet. But I will venture a guess 
that the mother and her tottlings of the Venta Aguilar will come 
to hear me preach when my Spanish is perfected, and I return to 
hold service at this solitary inn. 

The soldiers who were busy gambling for coppers in the stable- 
yard, I fear will not so readily attend that service, for I made no 
impression on their minds while spending a moment watching their 
game. Two pitchers of cents followed the usual fashion of that 
game. Others sitting around put up their coppers on the throw. 
They got excited, and could easily have changed their laughs to 
blows. I prefer the gamboling of the little girls and their baby 
housekeeping. 

From Venta Aguilar we have a delightful ride of six leagues, 
over as fine a prairie as ever gladdened the eyes of an Illinois 
fa'-mer , finer, in fact, because encircled with grand hills. It is 
such a luxury, after our rocky roads and hideous joltings, to get on 
a plush carpet, and roll like a lad in the first spring grass on south- 



THE "MISTERIOr 277 

ern slopes. The air is warm and breezy. The fields lie twenty 
miles fi-om hill to hill across our bows, and twelve from stem to 
stern. They are used for grazing, and were for a long while the 
favorite place for raising bulls for the bull-fights. These having 
been suppressed, the bull -raising has gone with them, and the 
splendid pastures are devoted to more honorable and peaceful 
grazing and tillage. I shall long remember with refreshing de- 
light that posta, as the run of our team is called, across the airy 
plains of Cazadero. 

We drive through the puerta of Palmillas, or gate of a gentle- 
man of that name, and alight for breakfast at a high, cool, pleas- 
ant hacienda, where we get a warm and edible meal of the usual 
course : soup, three meats, salad, beans, dulce (or sweetmeats), and 
coffee, for one dollar. It is worth the money to us, though it cost 
the landlord hardly a quarter of that sum. 

A blacksmith shop near the gate beguiled me of a few moments, 
and taught me a few lessons. An Indian boy was fusing some 
bits of iron in the usual fashion of his tribe. On the wall of the 
smithy hung a picture of the Virgin of Gaudalupe, and also one 
entitled " Misterio de la Santissima Trinidad," which was itself a 
sermon. The Father Almighty was depicted as a venerable man 
with gray beard, long locks, gown, and a triple crown on his head 
— the mitre of the pope. The Dove sat on his breast ; and be- 
tween his knees, with his arms over each begowned leg, on the 
ground half kneeling, half squatting, sat the Second Person in the 
Trinity, nearly naked, his wounded side exposed, his sad face 
crowned with a circlet of thorns. This cheap print is sold by the 
priests to devout lads like this j for a necklace of beads and charm 
attached beneath his open shirt showed that he was an honest dev- 
otee. I left that little smithy with a deeper ardor to give to this 
lad and his people a better Gospel than this idolatrous one. 

" Eterne alternation 

Now follows, now flies ; 
And after pain pleasure, 
After pleasure pain lies." 



278 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

This law exists even in postas. The last was so luxurious, I prop- 
erly dreaded the one to come. I did not dread it too much. It 
was dreadful beyond description. We met it almost the instant 
we left the gate of Seiior Palmillas. It was our descent into the 
Valley of San Juan. For six miles we plunged hither and thither 
over the rocky slabs and boulders and the gullies around them. 
The soil is worn away by the rain and the coach, and no attempts 
are made to build up an even pathway. It would not be difficult 
to make a pleasant drive-way down the hill ; but manana (to-mor- 
row), and no denario (money), combine to make every hill-road I 
have seen in Mexico a torture to man and mule. The roads not 
ten miles from the capital that descend the hills into the city, 
and are frequented with teams and travel, are in the same condi- 
tion. The landscape tries to soften the travel. It comes as a 
poultice to our bruised limbs. In the midst of the upheavals from 
beneath, we catch glimpses of a valley that shall soothe us for our 
tossings. 

It is green with trees and fields, and stretches out along the base 
of the embracing mountains for a score miles and more. A 
mountain of a peculiar type comes into the landscape. It is off to 
our right, a cone of yellow rock with sub-cones truncated half up 
its sides. Alone it stands, not being connected with the ranges of 
ordinary volcanic hills that everywhere meet the eye in all these 
uplands. It seems a creation of another sort. Its color, shape, 
and solitariness are all its own. It stands back of the regular rim 
of the valleys, and looks at us through the openings between the 
hills. It may be fifty miles away, probably more. It is worth vis- 
iting, and were I here long enough I would make an excursion to 
the Lone Yellow Cone beyond the prairie of Cazadero and the 
hills of San Juan. 

The road gets over its madness, or we over the road, and we 
scamper down, not easily, into the beautiful valley, reminding one 
of that finest line, rhythmically speaking, in all "Evangeline," which 
has many hexameters as musical as Homer's, as the world will find 
out when Longfellow is dead. How presumptuous of Bryant to 



BEGGARS AN INSTITUTION. 279 

put the hot and mellifluous " Iliad" into his cold blank (very) verse, 
when Longfellow was alive, who could do it into English hexame- 
ters as honeyed and galloping as its own Greek ! Why will he not 
give his next ten years to this Conquest of Troy ? But I have got 
a long way from my quotation in my dissertation. It may seem 
tame to give it now. Yet here it is : 

" Into the Sweet-water valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska." 

Our Indian words are as good as the Greek, and Longfellow has 
handled them as deftly. So we were precipitated into the beau- 
tiful Valley of San Juan, and flew through the streets of a large 
town of that name, halting short at the hotel in the plaza, and there 
resting. 

A dissertation on beggars may as well come in here as any- 
where. Beggars are an institution in Mexico, the most developed 
of almost any one of her institutions. They are especially so in 
the outer settlements, but few of them being seen in the city, where 
the police represses them. They have graced every station on our 
route. The most finished specimens of this class I have seen were 
at Cuernervaca. As I was leaving my dining-room, a gentleman 
met me at the door, dressed in a faded but cleanly suit, not unlike 
a retired clerk, or a superannuated preacher. He spoke low and 
courteous. I listened, but could not understand, and turned to a 
companion, and asked him what this gentleman wished. He list- 
ened a moment. " Only a beggar !" was his translation. I was 
shocked, or would have been, but that in my solicitations for help 
of feeble churches and Christian causes, I had been myself often 
called by that contemptuous name. So I put this gentleman 
among the clergy, and gave him what we get on such occasions — a 
smile, but no shilling. 

Returning from a walk amidst the gardens of that delicious spot, 
a smiling lady of seventy or seventeen — her smile was of the latter 
age, certainly — met us, and beamed on us ; asked us if we had been 
in the flower gardens (our hands full of bouquets showed that) j^- in- 
quired if we stopped at the Hotel Diligencias ; and then prettily put 



28o 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



her hands to her frock, as a courtesying girl would do, and sighed 
and smiled forth her soul for a sixpence. We were taken aback 
by the sudden unmasking of her battery, and staggered forth a 
broken promise, broken in language then, and in fact afterward, 
that when we returned we would grant her favor. But we did not 
return. 

The beggars on this route have many arts. They whine and 
they smile. Blind men play the guitar and violin prettily ; and one 

of them would not desist, 
though bribed with a me- 
dio, saying, with true Mex- 
ican independence, that " I 
play for the pleasure of 
it ! Money ! that is a 
mere trifling considera- 
tion." Old men and old 
women abound. The for- 
mer whine, the latter grin. 
A jolly type of this last 
came at us in San Juan, 
and fairly beguiled our 
pocket of a penny by 
her bland mutterings and 
beaming eyes. 

Two ways I have learned 
of treating these visitors. 
One is to say in broken 
Spanish, " I don't understand you. If you will speak in En- 
glish, I will give you a medio." This Irish bull answers the pur- 
pose of getting up a laugh at their expense, and of nonplusing 
their wits for a moment. They are not ready for the proposition. 
Another is to give them a piece of bread or a banana. They re- 
verse every thing here ; and if you give them bread when they ask 
for a stone, or metal, which is stone actually, they are not pleased 
with your action any more than your children would be in the op 




MEXICAN BEGGAR. 



COMPANIONS ON THE ROUTE. ' 281 

posite process. So, standing among these beggars of St. John, 
and buying bananas and oranges, I courteously offer each of them 
one. They declined the offer, all but the one laughing old wom- 
an, and a make-believe crying girl. These accepted the less in 
hopes of getting the greater. 

The market-place of this town was in the centre of the street, 
and each dealer had over him or her an umbrella eight feet high, 
consisting of a rude pole with a ruder canvas, six to eight feet 
square, spread across its top. It served as a narrow covering for 
themselves and their fruit, though its "looped and windowed rag- 
gedness " afforded about as much sun as shade.* 

We are near the haunts of robbers. As we leave San Juan and 
climb the hill on the opposite side, they will surely assail us, it is 
said, with clubs and stones. Farther on, at Colorado, they are 
more sure to attack us with revolvers and Winchester rifles, which 
they lately stole, half-armed, from full-armed gentlemen in a stage. 
So we nerve ourselves for the coming possibility. One gets out 
three ounces, each of sixteen dollars' value, wraps them in a paper, 
and shows a cleft in the coach-door, where the window drops down, 
into which he proposes to drop them. Another, a French Jew and 
jeweler, has a box of precious stones with him. He is especially 
afraid of the stones and the metal not so precious as his own, and 
nervously describes the hoot and shout. A third is a clerk, with 
the only gold watch in the crowd. All these are armed with re- 
volvers. One of the group has no revolver, and no gold ounces 
nor watches. He finds the Petrine admonition valuable here, as 
elsewhere, against the putting on of gold or costly apparel, and so 
leaves his watch in Mexico, while, as for weapons, he must rely on 
woman's and a minister's weapon — the tongue. 

We take in another man at St. John, and rush madly out of 
town, and up the moderately high and immoderately hard hill. 
The men of the sticks and stones do not appear. The robber, 
as he has always been, thus far in my history, non est. We are in 

* See illustration, p. 249. 
I9 



282 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

jeopardy every hour. But the jeopardy is no worse than it was 
in England a century ago, when Dick Turpin reigned, and John 
Wesley traveled. Methodism will help do for this country yet 
what she helped mightily to do for England ; make it safe every- 
where. There are three prayers a day all over the land by all the 
people, and life is not safe three miles from any town. Yet it 
should be also said that most of the people are not robbers in act 
or sympathy. They are toiling, law-abiding, obedient, respectful. 
I have seen no Indian that looked ugly or dangerous. They treat 
you with great respect, take off their hats as you pass them on the 
road, and say, Bueno dios, senor, or Adios, senor, in the most courte- 
ous manner. The robbers are of their complexion, but not of their 
nature. These are getting less and less. They were created by 
poverty and politics, and with the cessation of pronunciamentos 
and the coming in of railroads they will die. 

The Valley of San Juan is one of the loveliest I have ever seen. 
Irrigated by the rivers that come from the hills in the edge of Tier- 
ras Calientes, it glows in green as perfect as Cortez's emeralds. 
For more than twenty miles its enchantments lie under the eye. 
Trees are sprinkled over it ; haciendas glitter here and there, 
white ships anchored in a green sea. There was one field of 
wheat which was not less than a hundred acres of level and rich 
color. I would say two hundred acres did I not wish to keep 
within bounds. This was a bit only of the big farm. Two of these 
haciendas belong to one man. They contain severally twelve 
square leagues, or over thirty square miles, and twenty-two square 
leagues, or about sixty square miles. They are called Ajuchitlan 
cito and Ajuchitlan grande, or small and great Ajuchitlan. Rod- 
riquez y Helquera is the fortunate, or unfortunate, possessor of 
these vast tracts — well on to half the valley, and which ownership 
makes the people poor and robbers. 

We pass two miserable villages, Arroyasecca and Sauz, fringing 
the magnificent fields with the rags of humanity^ and stop at Col- 
orado, the chief robber haunt, whose scowling gentry are sitting 
round a beer-table, or its Mexican equivalent, a pulqui stand. No 



A FAVORITE ROBBER HAUNT. ' 283 

place or people sink so low or soar so high as to get out of the 
reach of alcohol. We do not admire their looks or their bamboo- 
like homes. Both are as bad as bad can be. It is hardly pos- 
sible to make these men better till their condition is bettered. 
Grace is needed here, and then will come law, protection, progress. 
These horrid huts must first have family prayers, and then they will 
have goodly apparel, books, comfort, small farms of their own out 
of these broad farms, and true prosperity. Pray the Lord of the 
harvest to send forth laborers into this harvest. 

This is the favorite robber haunt along the road. Stages are 
frequently overhauled between here and Queretaro. Only yester- 
day was there such a visit to the coach. Though government 
troops in large numbers are lazily lounging in that city, and though 
a few score of riders could clean out the whole pest, yet they are 
undisturbed, and the travelers are left to the cruelty of their ten- 
der mercies. 

As we enter their paveless street, they eye us from under the 
coats of dirt upon their faces, and evidently reckon on some game 
in that stage for their rifles. When the mules are changed, the 
driver rushes from the stables with the usual whirl and mad dis- 
play with which he enters and leaves the towns. But in this case 
it is evident that his scare adds wings to his speed. We fly 
through the village and in among the stunted oaks of a moderate 
hill-slope, up the rough road, hardly abating our speed, for such 
oaks are splendid for ambuscade, and we scarcely walk our tired 
mules until we emerge from the last low thicket that overhangs 
the valley and the city of Queretaro. The meadows of St. John 
are gone with their beauty, not unlike that of the St. John at Cam- 
bridge, England. The sun is setting in our eyes, sending a blaze 
like that of a furnace into the clouds he is looking down upon. 
What would not Turner have given to have seen that copper- 
smelting glow ? No tint of canvas could approach it. 

Far down the steep incline lies the city. One seldom sees a 
lovelier sight than this. We run down, over rocks and boulders, 
the terrible road knocking the passengers, if not the coach, to 



284 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



pieces. The city ever allures us on. Its towers and domes glis- 
ten in the dying light, half hidden among abundant foliage. Da- 
mascus never looked 



lovelier. Though I 
never saw that earthly 
Eden, I fancied I saw 
it in this sunset view. 
The hollow of the hills 
looks small from this 
height, and the city 
seems embossed on the 
bottom of a bowl of ra- 
diant green. It looks 
large and majestic from 
o- this hill-top. It is per- 
fectly in the grasp of 
the eye. A farther de- 
scent brings the aque- 
duct to view, the state- 
liest Roman that is ex- 
tant in America, and 
there is no grander in 
Italy, nor one so grand. 
It strides across the 
hollow, forty feet high, 
with massive pillars and 
broad arches. We rush 
beneath it, fly round and 




round dirty, mud -faced streets, into the thick of the town, and 
halt suddenly at the Hotel of the Diligence. The day's ride of 
over one hundred miles is done, and gladly the couch is sought 
and found. 



WHERE MAXIMILIAN DIED. 



285 



II. 

QUERETARO. 

Into the Town. — Maximilian's Retreat. — Capture and Execution. — Hill of Bells. 
— Factories and Gardens. — Hot-weather Bath. — A Home. — Alameda. — Sun- 
day, sacred and secular. — A very Christian name. — Crowded Market, and 
empty Churches. — Chatting in Church. — Priestly Procession. — Among the 
Churches. — Hideous Images. — Handsome Gardens. 

As I came rattling down the steep place into this fair city with 
the setting of the sun, I could only think of another sun that set 
here, and whose sad brilliance shot a lurid flame across the orb of 
the world. Here Maximilian met his fate. 

This was the last landscape he ever saw ; such a sunset on these 
same hills the last he ever looked upon. It brought a shadow 
over the picture, a shadow not of time, but of man. These are the 
fields and hills which 

" Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." 

Maximilian and Montezuma, three hundred and fifty years apart 
in their history, are blended in a historic unity. They had much 
in common. Men of refined rather than of strong nature, loving 
art rather than arts, put in command of a turbulent people at a 
crisis in its history, with an instinct of honor rather than of gov- 
ernment, they each fell into hands more powerful than themselves, 
and perished with regret, and yet with dire military necessity. 

Maximilian retreated to Queretaro, after the French left the 
country, a step of exceeding unwisdom ; for Mexico the city is Mex- 
ico the State, and the possession of that is nine points in the pos- 
session of all the country. He fled to this city probably because 



286 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

it was a clerical town, and one of his most ardent supporters, while 
the political capital might prove treacherous. 

The Republicans surrounded it. Batteries were planted on the 
hill down which the diligence plunges ; on a headland next to it, 
across a broad and deep caiion ; and the third on Sierra de los 
Campanas, or Hill of the Bells, a knob of not much height, rising 
out of the meadows to the north-west of the town. He was in the 
Church of the Cross, with huge gardens attached, surrounded by a 
high wall, making a fortress of especial strength. One of his gen- 
erals betrayed that fortress of a church, and he was captured. 
Tried by court-martial, he is condemned for publishing a cruel 
edict, two years before, which outlawed all Republicans, and caused 
the murder of many. He is ordered to be shot, with two associ- 
ates, Miramon, ex-President of the republic, and Tomas Majia, a 
general. They are marched out to the Hill of the Bells, and in 
front of its fort, high up the hill-side, the three men fall by the bul- 
lets of the government. With them fell the Church power in Mex- 
ico. It was her last battle. For twenty years she had plotted, 
and raised rebellions, and introduced a foreign prince and a foreign 
army. Miramon was her Mexican leader, Pius IX. her European. 

A favorite picture on the parlor walls of devout Romanists here 
is Maximilian and Carlotta visiting the pope. He sits on a dais, 
holding converse with them about Mexico. They were blessed by 
him, and urged on their dim and perilous way. He was the real 
centre of the imperial movement ; Napoleon was only his military 
director. All of it was Romanism, and Romanism only. 

When America finished her war, Mr. Seward put sixty thousand 
men on the Mexican frontier, and sent a polite note to the French 
minister suggesting that the French troops be recalled from this 
continent. Napoleon saw that his stay in Mexico was at an end, 
and gracefully withdrew his troops. Maximilian should have gone 
with him. But he fancied he could win alone. He trusted the 
Church party. They were weak and weaker every day. Juarez, 
inspired by the United States, moved on him and drove him hith- 
er, captured, condemned, shot him. 



A SCENE FOR THE CANVAS. . 289 

The hill where he was killed is only a mile from the town. It 
is about a hundred feet high — a Bunker Hill in size, height, and 
history ; for here Mexico achieved, in her way, her independence. 
He was placed a little below the summit, facing the east, looking 
toward Miramar and his mother's house. A sketch, made at the 
time, gives the sad scene. The three men stand apart from each 
other, and guards of soldiers are on either side. Easy and grace- 
ful in their attitudes, calm of feature, they await the shot that 
sends them to another world ; let us hope a world where there is 
no war, nor wickedness, nor woe. 

The spot where he fell is marked by a heap of stones, cast up 
without order by living hands. Many of these stones are marked 
with a cross. Some of them have three crosses on them, some five 
— the most sacred sign — emblematic of the five wounds of Christ. 

This is the tribute of his party and Church, and could not have 
been done in many cities of the country. It shows how badly the 
cross is blasphemed, and justifies our Puritan fathers for abolishing 
its use altogether. It came to signify spiritual tyranny and super- 
stition, and was rightly rejected. So these rude scratches are evi- 
dence of hostility to republican and tolerant ideas, of bitterest hos- 
tility to true Christianity. It may yet burst forth, not in crosses 
alone, but in crucifixion also. 

The view from this Hill of the Bells is-uncommonly fine. The 
valley lies about you, full of verdure. Never did any valley look 
lovelier. Hundreds of acres of wheat and barley and lucern, 
greenest of the green, seem in a race for superiority in color, 
while the trees are not behind in beauty. Flowers of richest hue 
glow in the gardens, and the city stands forth, with its glittering 
towers and domes, a spectacle long to be remembered. It would 
be hard to find the equal in beauty of this combination of high, 
bold cliffs, ranges of hills, velvet meadows, and stately churches. 

The river makes the town. But for that, this valley would be as 
dry and yellow as that of Mexico. As it is, one can not see within 
the circuit of the spurs of the hills a barren spot. If but George 
L. Brown were only here to put this scene on his burning canvas, 



29© OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR, 

how many would haste to see the picture, if not the reality. I 
know not where is a richer bouquet. Other valleys are grander; 
this is complete. As if to keep the memory green of the great 
conflict crowned on this spot, some ancient nopals just below the 
crest still show the holes in their leaves made by the bullets of the 
besiegers. It is a monument that will not soon die, for nothing 
seems to live more leisurely than the cactus, and it well adorns the 
lustrous picture with its rude and strong appropriateness. 

The whole scene is placid and lovely as a sleeping babe. How 
different when blood and fire and vapor of smoke filled all the hol- 
low! 

" Death rode upon the sulphury siroc, 
Red battle stamped his foot, and nations felt the shock." 

This inland town and this tiny hill made sorrow and trembling in 
the Tuileries and Schonbrunn. Consternation awoke in all courts 
as the stern decree was executed that announced to all the world 
that European monarchs must "hands off" to all American nation- 
alities, and ere long to all American soil. 

The city, like all in Mexico and everywhere else, has much that 
will not bear close examination. Its edges are not sweet, any 
more than those of London or New York. It has but few choice 
streets, and fewer choice houses. The most are depressingly de- 
grading. Poverty has wrought its perfect work, and the last cent 
is both often and rarely seen by the pauperized people. Beggars 
abound, and thrust their offensive whinings into your unwilling 
ears. The plaza is a pretty garden of tropical delights, more boun- 
tiful than that of Mexico, for the land lies lower and warmer. 

Other products abound. Under the portal of this plaza, among 
the shops, I saw a lad generously searching the long, thick, grizzled 
back hair of his mother as faithfully and as successfully as such 
mothers in other lands search such sons. It was a good evidence 
of filial affection. 

A factory here deserves notice. It is two miles from the city, 
in a deep, hot canon, and is big enough to attract attention, even 
in England or New England. On its looms it employs fifteen 



DESCRIPTION OF A COTTON FACTORY. 



291 



hundred hands. Mr. Sawyer, a New Hampshire cotton-spinner, 
superintends several rooms. He took me over the whole of it. I 
know little of cotton-spinning, though I have been taken through 
many mills. I saw this had the familiar whirr and fuzz of such 
mills. Rooms as long as those of Lowell were driving their looms. 
The main building is but three stories high, and most of them 
only two. The cloth manufactured is of poor quality, not worth 
over six cents in the States. Here it sells for eighteen and three- 
quarter cents : a real and a medio. 




A COTTON FACTORY, QUERETARO. 

The most striking peculiarity about these mills is the garden in 
front of them. This garden is full of orange-trees laden with the 
ripe fruit, with peach-trees in blossom, figs, pomegranates, trees 
bearing crimson flowers called the "noche buena," or the Christ- 
mas flower, as it is much used for that holiday. Roses, geraniums, 
fuchsias, and many unknown to the cold North are blooming in 
this factory yard. 

More striking is the old mill in this vivid contrast. It stands 
back from the street, near the water-course. It is inclosed on three 
sides with a high iron fence, light, graceful, and tipped with gilded 
points and balls. Inside is a spacious garden, with walks and 



292' OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

founts and foliage and flowers. Several gardeners daily care for 
the nourishment and pruning of these thirsty and wanton luxuries. 
Benches are scattered around. Thickets of green and natural 
houses are daintily grown together. Every thing is after the best 
type of a lordly pleasure-garden, and yet it fronts a factory where 
whirring spindles and looms are its constant music. Flutes and 
soft recorders would seem more fitting. 

How would our factories be improved with a slight approach to 
this beauty! Perhaps they prefer to give their hands more than 
thirty-one cents a day, and to work them less than fifteen hours, 
than to adorn the grounds so richly. That is what these work- 
men and work-women get and do. For two reals and a medio 
they work from six in the morning to nine and a half at night \ 
some from five to that late hour, with a recess of one hour and a 
half All the workmen pay a real a week for the doctor, whether 
they want him or not, and take one-third of their pay out of the 
company's store ; so their fifteen reals, or one dollar and seventy- 
five cents a week, becomes fourteen, and ten of these, or one dol- 
lar and a quarter, is all their cash in hand for ninety hours' 
steady work, at half-past nine on Saturday night. No wonder the 
huts they occupy, my lord, the owner of the mills, would not put his 
favorite dog into. He even keeps a judge, before whom he re- 
quires all their grievances to be brought, and over the door of his 
office is printed "The only Judge." This signified that none 
should seek relief at any other court except at his peril. The 
owner of these mills is successful and unsuccessful, making and 
losing many a fortune. He is a young man who inherited the es- 
tablishment, and who has the odd fancy of going daily to town in a 
red stage-coach with four horses, which he drives, preferring this 
startling mode to riding horseback or in an ordinary vehicle. I 
saw him thus flaunt out. His mills do not pay, despite the ele- 
gance of the gardens, the poorness and price of the goods, and the 
cheapness of the labor. He is constantly and overwhelmingly in 
debt. So the Yankee mill-owner may conclude it is wiser to make 
his mills less romantic and his profits more sure. If he also will 



THE ALAMEDA OF QUERETARO. . 293 

work his people less and pay them more, his lack of taste may'be 
condoned. Still, if to all excellences he adds these factory gar- 
dens of Queretaro, he will find his mill the more attractive, and 
make of duty a delight. 

The valley runs up into the hills, filled with groves of fragrance, 
fig, orange, cactus, agua (a vegetable butter-apple, used as sauce 
for the tortillas), zapotes, and other nameless fruits. At its head a 
bath attracts many visitors, placed among groves of incense. The 
very air is burdened with spicy odors. 

The aqueduct that stalks so majestically across the short cam- 
pagna has its fountain-head near these baths. It runs along the 
mountain-sides for three miles, and then marches across the valley 
to the town. It makes a superb feature in the landscape ; and is 
the only real Roman relic, save what the church affords, on the 
continent. It is ante-Roman, older than the Ceesars, old as Ra- 
meses and Solomon. 

The alameda here is the pleasantest I have seen in all the coun- 
try. It is a little one side of the town, and has a country look such 
as Boston Common used to have, and Druid Hill now has. It is 
about fifty acres square, has a drive around it, and long, straight 
diagonals going from a central circle to the corners. High, grand, 
green ash-trees make its chief shade. Grass, well sprinkled with 
dandelions, lies open to the free play of children, and wanderings 
of their elders. The familiar tree and flower made the spot more 
Northernish and home-like than any of its fellows. It was a deli- 
cious spot to sit and muse, and grow mellow with homesick long- 
ings. London parks, the only country fields in the heart of a 
great city, are not more homely and homeful. One forgets his 
strange surroundings, hostile even though they be, in this 

" Society where none intrudes," 

for beggar, nor priest, nor lordling frequent the spot. There is 
no wealth to come, and the others go not where wealth is not. 
When you come to Queretaro, be sure to take a long lounge 
through its alameda. 



294 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The Sunday begins, like all other days here, religiously and sec- 
ularly. The trumpets of the garrison ring out the first reveille, and 
the bells of the churches ring out almost immediately their oracion, 
or call to prayer. By five the tintinnabulations play on the tympa- 
num, like a Fourth of July at home, and " sleep no more " is a de- 
cree that has to be obeyed. It was a pleasanter sound, certainly, 
than the music of pleasure bands and factory bells, and I almost 
forgot myself for a moment, and fancied I vs^as going to have a 
goodly service on this sacred day. This impression vi^as deepened 
by an incident which occurred while I was taking my desayuno, or 
first breakfast, which consists of only a cup of coffee and a small 
roll. I ask the waiter what his name is, "Trinidad, senor," he 
replies, respectfully. Shocked at the answer, I repeat it. " Trin- 
idad?" "Si, senor." "La Santissima Trinidad .-'" "La Santis- 
sima Trinidad, senor." So I was talking with the Most Holy 
Trinity in the form of a poor Aztec boy. I never supposed their 
baptismal names had reached that pitch of profanity. "Jesus" 
is as common as John at home ; more so : but " La Santissima 
Trinidad !" 

I asked this wonderfully named youth if he went to church. 
"Yes." "Every day?" "Every eighth day." "What day?" 
"Sunday." "At what hour?" "Between five and six." So that 
bell-ringing had taken him to church. I asked him if he could 
read. "Yes." " Have you a Bible ?" "No." "Would you like 
one?" " Yes." All I had was a Spanish Testament, and that went 
to La Santissima Trinidad at the risk of disclosing my business, 
and bringing the kidnapers about my ears. How strange to call a 
child by the most holy name of God Himself The priest that 
baptized such a babe needs himself to be renewed in the spirit of 
his mind, and the Church that admits it certainly should be re- 
formed. 

This utter insensibility to all distinctions as to sacred and divine 
things was strikingly shown at a dinner-table in Cuernervaca. A 
company of Americans and English, all Protestant in their train- 
ing, had a leading Mexican of the section at meat with them. A 



DESECRATION OF THE SABBATH. . 295 

water-melon was brought on. He cut off the end, and pouring a 
bottle of wine into it, said, " This is the blood of Christ. This " 
(feeling of the melon) " is the body ; and the two, coming together, 
make a soul." He said this blandly, and as though he were get- 
ting off a good religious thought. Even the freethinking members 
of that party shrank from that unconscious profanity. So thor- 
oughly are this people saturated with form and void of power, 
under the education of mere form, in which they have for so many 
generations been trained. 

I went out, after my coffee, to church ; for though I have little 
faith in Romanism, I feel that it is better to go to the house of 
God, strangely perverted though it be, than to idle the day away 
in outward non-observances. One can himself pray aright, if the 
others pray awry. The plaza before the cathedral was crowded 
with trades-people. Bazars had been formed by temporary shan- 
ties, and the streets adjoining were lined on both sidewalks ; the 
stores were in full blast. Never a day more busy. The divine 
names given by the priests do not prevent the desecration of the 
divine day. It would be easy to stop all this. But the Sabbath, 
and the Bible, and the very titles of our God and Saviour are alike 
cast out and trodden underfoot. Is it any wonder God has cast 
them out ? Over all this land nothing is writ so plain as the an- 
nihilation of ecclesiastical power and wealth. Every church they 
hold, not as their own, but as a loan of the government, while con- 
vents, immense in extent and costliness, are everywhere deserted 
and in ruins. This city is full of them, not yet driven through by 
the plowshare of the street commissioner; for there is not money 
enough to level them, and make them into highways. Yet they 
are all the more desolate from their utter emptiness and silent 
crumbling into dust. One of these plazas, and the most beautiful, 
was made from the garden of a convent belonging to the cathedral, 
and along one side of it, coming up to that church and covering 
not less than ten acres, is a heap of ruins, in the very heart of the 
city. You wander under lofty arches, and into courts without a 
window, door, or dweller — a ruin as complete as Melrose Abbey or 



296 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

the Coliseum. Such is it in many places in this yet intensely pa- 
pal town. Let the true and living Church come and build up these 
waste places, and fill these empty courts with heavenly songs and 
teachings and testimonies. 

" Hasten, Lord, the glorious day." 

I entered the cathedral at about half-past eight. Mass had al- 
ready commenced, though only a few were present. They kept 
coming in and dropping on their knees. There are only one or 
two benches, so the floor is the sitting-place. Two ladies, dressed 
in blue silk, with all the fashionable flounces and over-skirts and 
trails, floated by me, one kneeling at the foot of the altar, where 
she could sit also, when she desired ; the other seating herself on 
the bench where I sat. They wore black lace veils, and no bon- 
nets. I have never seen a bonnet in a church here. As others 
came in of their friends, there were nods and smiles of mutual rec- 
ognition ; and when some of them knelt at the side of those on the 
floor, conversation ensued, the service constantly going on. So I 
saw that kneeling in a papal church did not any more necessitate 
devotion than sitting in other church'es. 

After much singing by the boys, and other incidents of the mass, 
a procession is formed, and a silken canopy, wrought with gold, is 
borne by six Indians, who, I note, are never priests — only Gibeon- 
ites. I have not seen a full-blooded Indian in high Church orders. 
They rule in the State, but not in the Church. Yet I hear they 
are found in some parts of Mexico. Before this canopy marches 
one with a silver crucifix. Under it a very old man carries a sil- 
ver star or sun, on which the crucifix stands, seemingly a very sa- 
cred affair. Hard-looking officials accompany this venerable bear- 
er. They stop opposite my bench at an altar, and bow and kiss 
the silver sun, move on to the high altar, and place it in the cen- 
tre. It is as powerless and useless as the opera operations of 
some more intelligent, if not more Christian congregations. It 
was nothing to the crowd that witnessed it, or the men that per- 
formed it. 



THE VIRGIN IN FINE ATTIRE. , 297 

A sermon was preached at this stage, which, as I could not un- 
derstand, I did not dislike ; nor did I dislike the manner and ap- 
pearance of the preacher, who seemed earnest and devotional; 
and I especially liked the breaking off half way in his discourse 
and engaging in prayer, in which all the congregation joined. I 
should have liked it better had I not seen the same thing twice 
before, and therefore judged it formal, and not of the heart. Yet 
I do not condemn a good practice because of possible formality, 
and would not object to seeing a like invocation by preacher and 
people at the beginning, middle, and end of our sermons. 

After attending this service I visited the churches. Few of 
them are in a good condition. None have a fresh and animating 
air. All overflow with images. Never did a nation so give itself 
up to image-worship. Hundreds of little white images hang near 
the shrine or doors, probably to be sold for household gods. The 
Virgin Mary is dressed in every sort of garb and color, sometimes 
with crinoline, yards across. In the Church of Santo Domingo, in 
Puebla, her robes stand out with an enormous spread. Blue, pur- 
ple, yellow, lace, gold and silver ornaments — every array is she 
set forth in. Once I admired the simplicity of her apparel. At 
the Church of San Felipe, over the top of the high altar, she stood 
in perfect white marble, or hard and shining plaster, hooded, al- 
most, as to her face, holding in one hand a candlestick, and in 
the other a crucifix. It was too simple and severe for the taw- 
dry taste displayed usually behind these glass fronts. 

A crucifix below, on a side altar, made amends for that simplic- 
ity. Christ was on his hands and knees. His whole backbone 
seemed laid open by the lash, and blood was flowing from every 
rib and cord over his sides. It was horribly hideous and false, as 
were the two courtesanish-looking faces of fair, fat, forty, and fine- 
ly-dressed women that were made into angels, and hovered dolor- 
ously, but not sympathetically, above him. 

The Church of the Cross, where Maximilian lived, and which he 
fortified, and where he was captured, is one of the chief churches, 
with some ornament, but especially noticeable for a graceful tomb, a 



298 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

shrouded female with a long wand, leaning over a tablet, on which 
the name of the dead is graven. 

Santa Clara, where my astonishingly -named mozo goes, is the 
most ornate structure. Such a profusion of gilding I have seen 
nowhere else. Five altars from floor to ceiling are covered with 
figures and carved work, all thick with gold, while the arches 
around and above the door-way are, if possible, even more over- 
laid. It is astonishing what an outlay of precious leaf has been 
made on these shrines. This church was crowded at vespers to 
the pavement without, where many sat, joining with the voices that 
took up the refrain from within. These were all the poorest of the 
poor. Rags and beggary and utter penury knelt on the floor or 
sat on the benches of this gilded chapel that cost more than any 
church, probably, in the United States. When shall we equal them 
by our equality ? 

The Church of the Virgin of Gaudalupe was almost equally 
adorned with gold, but had only a few worshipers. Its convent 
has become a hospital, and exquisite flowers fill its courts with 
beauty of odor and of sight. Its front is of the Moorish type, 
more so than any in the capital or Puebla, and its graceful minaret 
and very quaint buttresses, flying out from the wall like a scroll, 
are proofs of the influence Grenada had over Madrid. 

The churches and priests are the chief characteristic of Quere- 
taro. No wonder it is such a church-town. It is more completely 
filled with these structures than any city I have seen — than any, 
probably, in the land, except Guadilajara. Puebla has far less, 
proportionately to its inhabitants, and far inferior ones, excepting 
its cathedral, which here is cheap and poor. One I strolled into 
(I forget its name) had five altars, with ornaments carried to the 
roof, most elaborately and profusely carved and gilded. Statues, 
globes, hearts, and even the coils of the entrails, are perched on ev- 
ery possible spot, and covered thick with gilt. The door-way to 
the sacristy was remarkably adorned in this fashion. Only those 
of Santo Domingo chapel, in Puebla, were equally brilliant at the 
time of their execution. They make none such nowadays. Gold 



AN ADVENT AWAITED. ■ 399 

is too dear, and the Church too poor for this luxury. It looks 
faded also, and, like its service and power, is out of joint with the 
present. 

Priests abound. I have not seen as many, in all my stay in 
Mexico, as in this single day. Some of these big convents are as 
yet unopened, and the day of their sovereignty has not yet closed. 
It will be perilous, perhaps, to establish the true worship here, 
though there are some who look and long for its appearing. I 
heard of one such, a Mexican workman of influence and position. 
I understand there are others who are ready to cast away their 
beggars' robes of idolatry and formalism and arise and come to 
Jesus. May many and all soon come ! 

We close our visitations, convinced that much prayer and faith- 
ful labor must be put up and put forth before this people will be 
weaned from their idols and their Sabbath-breakings, and brought 
to the feet of Christ. And that prayer is going up, and that labor 
is going forth, and Queretaro shall be a city holy unto the Lord, 
with sanctuaries filled with grateful, joyful, holy, intelligent, prosper- 
ous worshipers. No rags, no beggary, no Sabbath-breaking, no 
superstition. 



300 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



III. 

TO GUANAJUATO. 

A bad Beginning. — A level Sea. — Celaya. — A Cactus Tent. — Salamanca. — 
Irapuato. — Entrance to Guanajuato. — Gleaning Silver. — The Hide-and-go- 
seek City. — A Revelation. 

I HAVE had two real panics since my arrival in this country, both 
short and severe. The first was the night of my reaching Mexico ; 
the last, the night of my leaving Queretaro. Both were ground- 
less ; but so was Mr. Parrish's scare in North Salem, almost two 
hundred years ago, about witches, if he was scared at all, which 
is doubtful, there being good reasons for believing he was simply 
carried away by revenge in a church quarrel. That scare has 
given the enemies of Massachusetts a good stick to beat her with 
from that day to this, and faithfully has it been used. 

My first scare was caused by the horrors on which I was fed 
from New York to the capital. I was told that I must go under a 
feigned name, or I would be poisoned, stilettoed, kidnaped, robbed. 
This is an anticlimax, but a true one to some souls, loss of money 
being to them the greatest Joss. I found on my arrival at Mexico 
that one minister, not being well, thought that he was poisoned by 
the Jesuits, and was urged to have a private room and an Ameri- 
can or English cook. I took a room in a hotel rented by a Jesuit 
priest, his father owning it, and went to bed. The room was very 
large, the bed very small. The farthing candle did not throw its 
beams very far, and only made darkness visible. Lonely, weary, 
heart-sick, homesick, I was in a good state for the panic to strike ; 
and it struck. For some minutes I rolled in the trough of the 
sea of fear. All its waves and its billows went over me. " Then 
called I on the name of the Lord ; oh Lord, I beseech thee, deliver 



n 



A POSSIBLE JACKAL. 301 

my soul." The work was His, not mine. The peril mine, the pres- 
ervation His, and preservation far surpassed all peril. My favorite 
talisman, that had done excellent service often before, was again at 
hand, and I repeated, 

" Jesus protects ! My fears be gone ! 
What can the Rock of Ages move ? 
Safe in His arms I lay me down, 
His everlasting arms of love." 

I had no return of that panic in Mexico. Though out late and 
in out-of-the-way places, I took my possibly poisoned coffee as 
cheerfully as Socrates his really poisoned drink, and came and 
went indifferent to fear. Though in consciousness of peril, there 
was no panic, nor thought of panic. 

It came upon me again at Queretaro, and as foolishly. I had 
been even more earnestly warned against making this tour. I 
had most unwisely allowed my letter of credit on the Diligencia 
company to be made out in my first name only, and my ticket to 
Matamoras likewise ; and with a Spanish ending, Senor Gilberto, 
which, under the novel pronunciation of " Hilberto," was sufficient- 
ly concealing. This was done without my knowledge or consent by 
a too careful friend, but I allowed it to pass. It did not increase 
my courage. A disguise, however thin, makes the wearer weak. 

At the head of the breakfast-table sat a fine-dressed gentleman, 
whose dulces and Champagne, freely proffered, made him autocrat 
thereof I was told afterward that his style was above his known 
means of support, that he was watched by the police, and that he 
was suspected of being in league with robbers, giving them infor- 
mation of any rich placers his position, as a boarder in the stage- 
house, might enable him to detect. I was to go at three in the 
morning, alone. Possibly the tea and coffee helped it along, but 
it came — the panic. I went to bed for a couple of hours, knowing 
better than "Probabilities" knows the coming weather, that there 
was to be a storm. The soldiers woke me at two, with some deli- 
cious soft notes. I rarely, if ever, heard any thing more mellow. 
But I only thought of the poor captain shot the day before I left 



302 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Mexico, for insulting his colonel, and fancied this bird-like sweet- 
ness was a knell. 

I took the coach, my sole companion opposite. Three armed 
men had accompanied me to Queretaro. One, perhaps unarmed, 
goes with me out of it. I had been trusting in those arms, though 
I pretended not to be relying upon them. I had repeated to a 
splendidly armed and trained shooter that I was sufficiently arm- 
ed ; for 

" Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just." 

And when he was not satisfied with his favorite as an authority, I 
fell back on one higher and better, and said, with David : " The 
angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, 
and delivereth them." Now here I am, without the language, or 
a rifle, or a companion, alone on the high seas of travel. I am 
tempted sore for a little ; then comes my talisman again : 

"Jesus protects ! My fears be gone !" 

And they went. I laid down on the rocking seat and slept. I 
awaked with the sun. My sole fellow-traveler left me at the sec- 
ond posta, Apiaseo, a long adobe town. 

I got out of my dignity and dust, and mounted behind the 
driver; no one is allowed to sit at his side. I exchanged verbal 
commodities, giving him English, of which I had plenty, for his 
Spanish, of which he had plenty. So we rode for a hundred miles; 
and the experience of riding alone and unarmed through the coun- 
try was settled ere that morning sun grew hot. I forgot all about 
the gentleman who was to let his robber friends know that I was 
on the road — a conceit that only a panic could have created ; for 
I was no fit game for their rifles. I felt as comfortable and secure 
with the driver and his unloaded rifle as with the best sharp-shoot- 
ers of the country. 

The country too, from Queretaro to Guanajuato, I had totally 
misapprehended. I had supposed, as the latter city was a mining 
town, the road to it must be far worse than any I had seen. I was 
condemning myself for my folly in going off my track home a hun- 



A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY. 303 

dred and fifty miles to see naught. It was as if one going to Al- 
bany from New York should have gone round by Springfield, ex- 
cept that this was all stage-riding, rough and tedious. 

But duty called, and I obeyed. ^^Fer aspera ad astra " I tried 
to make my motto, through hard places to the heavenly. But it 
turned out, as is so often the case when we fancy we have a big 
cross to take up, on taking it up, we find it no cross at all. 

The road was smooth and level as oil. Only where it crossed a 
dry brook, or where the coachman took the paved centre instead 
of the soft sides, which he did occasionally, was there any approach 
to rockness. The day was splendid, cloudy, and coolish ; the scen- 
ery was grand: a prairie a hundred miles long, and half that in 
width, with mountains ever inclosing the vision. The fields were 
almost all under cultivation. Irrigation gave them a green and 
gladsome look. The alfalfa, or lucern, was the greenest of the 
green. Wheat, barley, maize, and chilli were growing luxuriantly. 

Celaya was our first large and pretty town, some forty miles from 
Queretaro. A landlord, very bland and child - like in his smile, 
told me the city had a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants. 
" Twelve thousand," I suggested. " No, senor ; one hundred and 
twenty thousand." I wrote down the figures, "12,000;" he cor- 
rected them to "120,000." Somebody blundered; for the driver 
said there were not over eight thousand. Another traveler says 
there are twenty-five thousand. Perhaps he meant Leon, for which 
I was aiming. 

The market-place was full of flowers. They sell large bouquets 
of roses, tulips, and other flowers for a tlaqua (three-fourths of a 
cent). This is the only Indian name used in the currency, and 
was the bottom cent, an eighth of a real, until the centavos ap- 
peared, a tenth of a dime, and the new baby displaced the old one. 
Still the old dies hard, and every thing is sold by the tlaqua, and 
not the centavo. 

In the middle of the prairie, where we changed horses, a woman 
had made a tent of a cactus, and was busy rolling, patting, and fry- 
ing her tortillas, putting upon them a small spoonful of beans and 



304 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

a smaller spoonful of chilli, or pepper-sauce, folding them up for 
the driver and his mozo. This combination is not bad. 

There were not unfrequently stands by the roadside under a cac- 
tus-bush, and sometimes dinners, and sometimes dwellers there. 
The two chief towns, Salamanca and Irapuato, are not far from 
\ Guanajuato. The first is pretty; the last, beautiful. I have seen 
none more so. It contains a population of twenty thousand. The 
houses are freshly and prettily washed; and it is lively withal. I 
sauntered through the plaza, talking and being talked to by beg- 
gars many. How lovely are these plazas, with all manner of lovely 
flowers ! How unlovely their human weeds ! How strange such 
beauty can be so beset ! When shall our country villages see their 
greens and squares thus transformed ? Will they then be equally 
deformed ? I found this place had a local fame, and was the North- 
ampton or Canandaigua on which a traveler might stumble, and 
fancy he had made a discovery, when lo ! their beauties had long 
held a high place among their neighbors. So this city is a favor- 
ite the country round. It deserves to be. No preacher need be 
sorry if he is stationed at Irapuato. He will enjoy every minute of 
his triennium. 

The road runs on, still smooth and velvety, amidst hollows and 
Peru-trees, and the mesquite. We pass the hacienda of asses (a 
large and popular one, of course), and come to the hills that evi- 
dently conclude the valley. Our prairie is gone. What you could 
not do in a day in Illinois, we have done in exactly that time. We 
turn to the mountains on our right hand. They encircle us close, 
coming round in front, having been for a hundred miles on both 
wings. There is no way, seemingly, through, or over, or into ; and 
yet a city of fifty to sixty thousand inhabitants, the greatest silver 
town in the land, is right close to us, in among these bald, rocky 
bluffs. There must be a valley over there in which it lies em- 
bosomed. But where it can be, or how, are conundrums too hard 
for us. The plains are deserted, and we begin to wriggle in and 
out the spurs. We climb the hill slightly and softly, our good gen- 
ius of the road still keeping off the stones. No valley the other 



A MEANDERING RIDE. 



305 



side ; only a ravine. We enter it, pass a mud village, pass men 
spooning water with a jerk upon an inclined plane of stone, cov- 
ered with whitish mud. This is the last washing of the silver mud, 
and done, like gleaning, by the workmen out of hours, as their own 
private speculation. 




CHURCH OF SAN DIEGO, GUANAJUATO. 



Stone walls twenty and thirty feet high, and with a castellated 
look, inclose these reduction works. The hills grow closer togeth- 
er, as if to resist invasion. But the driver defies the hills, and 
dashes on, winding round, crossing and recrossing a shallow brook 
with no sign of a city, except now and then a gleam from a church 
high up the mountain-side, which increased the deception ; for the 
city was not there ; clinging now to the brook, now to the preci- 
pice, now to both together, narrowing and narrowing, like an old 
lady the toe of the stocking she is knitting. 



3o6 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Swinging round one of these blank and profitless points after 
another, we suddenly strike a small but beautiful green garden, full 
of loungers. Another sharp turn, and we are in the busiest street 
I have seen in Mexico : one side set with seats all occupied, the 
other with shops, chiefly of drink, and all the street alive with peo- 
ple. So we race through street after street, narrow, backed up 
against the hills, intensely crooked (as how could they otherwise 
be?), until another green plaza is passed, and we halt with a jerk, 
and a crunch as of steam-brakes, in the heart of the hole, at the 
Hotel Concordia. 

It is the most Yankee town in Mexico. Indeed, few in Yankee- 
dom are as Yankee. Dover and Lynn do not turn out as many 
gazers at the passing trains as these sidewalks and windows do to 
the rattling coach. Lowell is as full of street loungers; Manches- 
ter, perhaps ; but no other. 

I found Americans here, and was at home, both in the place and 
the language, from the start, and rejoiced at so delightful an end- 
ing to my unusually bad beginning. The road of which I had 
heard nothing, and which I had supposed so rough, was smooth as 
a Red River prairie. The robbers changed to chatty drivers and 
market-women, and the end was as home-like as the Merrimac or 
the Alleghany. So may every dark still turn to brighter day ! 



THE STYLE OF COSTUME. . 307 



IV. 

A SILVER AND A SACRED TOWN. 

Native Costume. — Reboza and Zarepe. — The Sombrero. — A Reduction Haci- 
enda. — The Church in Guanajuato. — Its Antipodes. — A clerical Acquaint- 
ance. — A mulish Mule. — " No quiere." — The Landscape. — Lettuce. — Calza- 
da. — The Town and Country. — Fish of the Fence. — The Cactus and the Ass. 
— Compensation. — One-story City. — High Mass and higher Idolatry. — The 
God Mary. 

Dust off, and clothes changed, let us go out and look at the 
city. The streets are full of people. This is a festa day, the day 
of St. Joseph, and nobody is at work. The folks are out in their 
best array of reboza and zarepe. The reboza is the mantle of the 
ladies, and their weakness ; the zarepe that of the gentlemen, and 
one of their weaknesses. For sexes, like every thing else here, go 
by the contraries to what they, do elsewhere, and men are much 
more dressy than women. The reboza is always quiet in color, 
black, blue, and brown being the prevailing tints. It is a thin-wove, 
light cotton mantle, some three yards long and three-quarters wide, 
which is worn over the head and shoulders in an easy and grace- 
ful manner. It is the only adornment they possess, apart from the 
pleasant faces that beam from within it, and which are as good- 
looking, that is, look as good, as their whiter sisters here or else- 
where. 

The men are more set forth. They essay the zarepe. I do not 
find this word in my lexicon, but suppose that is the way to spell it. 
This is a thick shawl of many colors, sometimes striped in red, yel- 
low, green, blue, and white ; sometimes with light centre and em- 
broidered edges. They muffle up their face, and wrap their shoul- 
ders in this gay shawl even in the hottest days. It is their pride. 
Some of them cost two or three hundred dollars, and they rise, with 



3o8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

gold and silver lace embroidery, to the height of five hundred dol- 
lars and over. Not so the ladies' mantle. The highest-priced re- 
boza I have seen vi^as worth fifteen to twenty dollars, and was a 
plain light-blue, checked, not looking a whit better in color than a 
blue checked calico of a ten-cent valuation, but of course soft and 
fine. It has also an edging of stiffened netting, a quarter of a yard 
wide, which is a sign of its aristocratic rank. 

The men are not content with their radiant zarepe. They essay 
the sombrero in silver and gold. Broad, light gray-and-white felts 
are faced with broad silver lace, and fantastically wrought. They 
have bands of silver swollen into a snake-like form around the bot- 
tom of the crown ; also buttons and stars of silver. They are oft- 
en very costly and ornate. 

Then come their pantaloons of leather, if they are on horseback, 
with a row of silver or brass buttons, close packed from pocket 
to heel, on the seam of either leg. The extra-fashionable adorn 
this garment by fancy facings on back and legs, set in very pretti- 
ly, and making that rude patch of our childhood and of many a 
manhood a really handsome ornament. 

It is but proper to say that the ubiquitous European is changing 
these fashions, and that more soft hats and silk hats after the New 
York and Paris fashions are seen to-day on the plazas of all the 
chief cities than the magnificently gotten-up sombreros, while the 
zarepe is almost entirely remanded to the working-classes. Even 
the brimless hats, with their towering feathers and flowers and lace, 
are replacing modest lace veils and black shawls for church, and 
blue rebozas ; and Mexico will soon, I fear, be undistinguishable 
in dress from New York. 

The mines have created this city, and still enrich it. They are 
located in the hills behind and above the town. Humboldt reck- 
oned that one-fifth of the silver of the world had come from one 
mine here, and the yield now is five millions a year. They are 
worked on shares — the laborer half, the owner half. These " dig- 
gings " are carried to the reduction haciendas, as grain is carried 
to a mill, and are either sold to the haciendados, or reduced by 



THE PROCESS OF REDUCTION. ' 309 

them for their toll. There are over fifty of such haciendas, some 
of them quite extensive. Mr. Parkman, of Ohio, has one of the 
oldest and largest. He is now somewhat feeble in years, and his 
sons carry on his business. His house, spacious and cool, over- 
looks his works. The miners and owners bring their ore here. It 
is distributed according to its apparent value, the best masses be- 
ing reduced by themselves. The ore is beaten under huge ham- 
mers, ground by mules walking round a press, in which it is re- 
duced to powder, placed in open vats, mixed with dissolving chem- 
icals, salt, sulphurets, and powerful solvents, and trampled by horses 
to get the soil and solvents well mixed together. But the powerful 
chemicals soon injure their feet. Mr. Parkman, with his Yankee 
wit, provides a cheap and admirable substitute. It is simply a bar- 
rel moving along an axle. The axle stretches across the patio 
from the centre to the circumference. Horses outside pull it 
round. The barrel on the axle both revolves upon it and moves 
up and down it, reaching thereby all the composition, and com- 
mingling it more perfectly than horses' feet can do, yet with injury 
to none. It is a simple and seemingly effective remedy. 

From this patio the substance is put through several waters, and 
the silver at last nearly extracted. It is then placed in furnaces, 
and by heating, the still adhering and undesired elements are driv- 
en out ; and so, through fire and water, the well-sought silver is 
brought into a narrow compass. Even then it is ragged and unfit 
for working. It must be run into bars, and carried to the mint, 
and coined into solid dollars, halves, and quarters, for the delight 
and destruction of mankind. In Guanajuato they vary this form 
of its ultimate disposition with those more pleasing and artistic ; 
and horses, horsemen, muleteers, carboneros, and other native pe- 
culiarities are cast in solid silver, and sold as curiosities at compar- 
atively low rates. In fact, silver is about all that flourishes in Gua- 
najuato. The people, like those of most mining towns, are reckless 
of money and morals. 

The church is more than silver. How is it in Guanajuato? 
Not very hopeful. Like most mining towns, it is more free than 



3IO OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

religious. It has several Roman churches, some of which are rath- 
er handsome. But there is little power, even of this church, over 
the city. Making money too easy, it is feverish, gambling, dissipa- 
ting, indifferent to the Church. There is room here for work of the 
right kind, much room. It would do no harm, but much good, if 
every Christian church had earnest missionaries among this half a 
hundred thousand population. . 

One thing does flourish, if the Church does not — the liquor sa- 
loons. Here, as everywhere the world over, the chief of devils 
is drink. But here, unlike the States, it assumes its true name. 
See that one on the chief street, rightly named, " El Delirio " (The 
Delirium); and this is "La Tentacion ! !" with two admiration 
points — (The Temptation ! !). Well named. I have seen one en- 
titled " El Abysmo " (Hell). If our beer and whisky saloons were 
equally honest, some of their victims might be saved from tempta- 
tion, delirium, and hell, which they now, under false pretenses, too 
surely bestow. 

Let us wind out of Guanajuato, and see its antipodes. One 
need not go half round the world to find his opposite. He meets 
him often at the next door, nay, usually in himself So we find the 
antipodes of Guanajuato fifteen leagues off. Leon is said to be 
the second city of the republic in size. It must be worth visiting. 
Five in the morning we are scampering through the streets of the 
city, in which the mules, like the Oregon, according to Mr. Bryant, 
hear no sound save their own dashings, and the city does not wish 
to hear even that. I am alone in the coach, and essay sleep, not 
very successfully, for I had unwisely been advised not to take my 
shawl, and more unwisely had followed that advice. The morning 
here is chill, though the day be hot. Since I could not sleep my- 
self warm, I strove to sing myself thus, and to admire the sun ris- 
ing over the Queretaro plain. But all of no avail. So, believing 
the best way to conquer any disagreeabilities is to face them, " and 
by opposing, end them," I concluded to take the whole dose of 
cold, fresh and full, on the top of the coach. 

The first posta is at the brisk town of Silao, where I mount be- 



CONVERSATION WITH A PRIEST. 311 

hind the driver, and find a seat on the same shelf occupied by a 
priest dressed in his robe, beads and all. It is the first sight of 
this sort I have seen in the country. He would not have dared to 
have done it in the city of Mexico. But they are less rigid here 
in respect to all interdicted matters. They allow bull-fights and 
priest's robes, neither of which can, occur in the capital. 

He seems clever, this priest, and is disposed to be conversa- 
tional. By means of broken English and Spanish, helped onwith 
some broken French and Latin, we contrive to get at each other's 
meaning quite fairly. He informs me that he is a priest of the 
new order of the Paulists, that he is conversant with Greek, He- 
brew, Italian, and French, as well as Spanish ; that he has never 
been at Rome, but expects to go next year. He inquires my pro- 
fession. "A writer for the press," I innocently answer. It is well 
sometimes to have two strings to your bow. But I add, " I am a 
Methodist." I meant to tell half the ecclesiastical truth, if I shrunk 
from telling the whole. This reserve is not unwise; for. Leon is 
the most fanatical of cities ; and the knowledge that a Protestant 
minister was entering it, even as an observer, would have been re- 
ported to the bishop before I had been fifteen minutes in the town. 
What consequences might have followed, poor Stevens's fate sug- 
gests. It was only about two days' ride beyond Leon, in a less re- 
ligious town, that he was massacred by order of the Church author- 
ities. By this semi-reticence, too, I got out of my Paulist friend 
light that I should not otherwise have gained. He caught at the 
word " Methodist." " How many churches have you," he said, "in 
the States ?" I tell him there are six leading churches : Baptist, 
Catholic, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian. 
He asks the peculiarities of the five of which he is ignorant. They 
are given. "Any Lutherans?" "A few churches of that name, 
composed principally of Germans." "Any Calvinists?" "Many 
of that faith, but no church organization of that name." "Are not 
many indifferenfesfas ?" I repeat that word, not catching its mean- 
ing. " Yes," he replies ; " no religion, no faith, no confession, 
nothing ?" " Yes, there are some who are not Christians, but most 



312 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

have some religious opinions they hold to, and many who are not 
members of Christian churches support and sympathize with them." 
Being asked what objects of interest were in Leon, " The theatre, 
the cathedral, and some haciendas," he answered. " Methodists 
never go to the theatre," I replied ; a remark at which he winced 
a little, and perhaps I ought to have winced also ; for it is rather a 
past truth, I fear, than a present one, though it ought to be true to- 
day as it was aforetime. He explained by saying that it was archi- 
tecturally attractive. 

A mule displayed his nature in an unusual degree. The epizoo- 
tic had reduced the working force of the road, and new mules had 
to be brought on. One of these dirty cream-colored fellows was 
in the thills. He was not disposed to be conquered, even with sev- 
en obedient fellows to drag him along in the path of duty. He 
was not to be fooled by any such tricks, so he held steadily back 
while they trotted fast, and was dragged forward in spite of him- 
self. The lash and the stones did not change his views of his dut}- 
to himself He only held back the more. It was a novel sight to 
see him thus dragged along by his collar, his heels flying in violent 
resistance to his will. 

At last, determined to end the contest by a coup de grace, down 
he flung himself on the ground. The seven brothers were on the 
full gallop, and would have dragged him to Leon. But he had cost 
too much to be used up that way. So the coach is stopped ; the 
obstinate chap, after a deal of resistance, is got upon his feet ; a 
rope is tied from his saddle under his tail, so as to make resistance 
less agreeable to himself; and off we start again. He begins soon, 
like Barbara Lewthwaite's pet lamb, to pull at the cord as bad as 
ever. He spurns the tail and saddle device, and after letting his 
legs oppose his will for a mile or two, down he goes again. He 
has learned the trick, and will play it till it wins. He is dragged 
fifty to a hundred feet on the flinty soil. It is of no use. He will 
not get up if he has got to go on. ''No quiere" says the priest (he 
does not desire). This is the Spanish way of putting "he won't." 
Pretty evident is it that he does not desire to conform. So he is 



IN VERDURE CLAD. 313 

released, put into the hands of the mozo, and we are subdued, not 
he, and go into town with only six animals, while he walks in, free 
of harness and coach. He had to pay for his liberty, I doubt not, 
and a big price, too, in the flogging he got, and did not afterward 
very often lie down in the middle of his route. 

Is the mule here called mula because of this force of will ? And 
did the word come from mulierl The opprobrious epithet of the 
parent of the mule is never applied to the sex. "An ass " is an 
insult given only to man. Mula takes the other side in its termi- 
nation, and in this instance forcibly illustrated the saying, "When 
she won't, she won't, and there's an end on it." No quiere settles 
many another attempt on the part of driving man to bring the oth- 
er and higher creature into subjection. 

The mountain ranges on each side are about ten miles apart. 
The plain is very level, and most of it very fertile and highly culti- 
vated. The hills are full of silver, quicksilver, and other precious 
minerals, so my brother-priest informs me, but can not tell why they 
are so little mined. They are awaiting a people who can make 
them unveil their charms. "iV2? quiere" they say to-day, and their 
human masters respect their wishes, showing thereby that they are 
not their masters. It will not be so always. Either these or oth- 
ers will subject these mountains to their sway, and compel their 
gorges to disgorge their treasures of ages. 

The fields lie very lovely to the eye, outspreading in their ever- 
lasting verdure, fed perpetually by streams from the mountains ; 
the beds and roadside glowing in tulips, roses, violets, and many a 
strange beauty none the less beautiful for her novelty. Wheat, al- 
falfa, barley, and corn are making glad the heart of man by their 
abundant growth. Haciendas claim immense territory on the left, 
but on the right the soil is cut up among little proprietors, or at 
least those who can lease and cultivate a few rods in comparative 
independence. 

Leon draws near, spread out at the base of a range of hills that 
terminates the valley. The older Indians and the children note 
the priestly dress and take off their hats in reverence ; but thei 



314 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

young men, I note, are less respectful. At first I thought it was a 
politeness meant for me also, and returned the obeisance ; but I 
soon found it was for the higher being by whose side I rode. 

We cross a bridge and drive through the calzada — a finely 
shaded avenue, with drives either side, and a walk and benches in 
the middle. Along the benches loungers are sitting, and market- 
women are selling lettuce, which is the chief esculent, seemingly, 
here. It grows very large, and the outer leaves are torn off and 
thrown away. The inside ones are pressed together, and the tall, 
compact bunch of delicate white and green looks good enough to 
eat, and is as good as it looks. They sometimes put tulips and 
roses and other flowers in the top of these bunches, and thereby 
increase their attraction to the eye, but not to the palate. 

A Sister of Charity here, as everywhere else, hideously dressed, 
has a bevy of school-girls on the calzada for recreation. The Ro- 
man Church has not lost all its wits yet. These fine-looking young 
ladies will cling to the nun and priest, and the young men will 
cling to them. Only a great outpouring of the Holy Ghost can 
open the eyes of this land by taking the veil from off their hearts. 

The hot streets are run through in our usual Gilpin style, and 
,we are reined up sharp at the door of the Hotel Diligencias. 

I bid adios to my friend, the priest of the order of Paul, and go 
out to conquer the town. It is soon done. He told me the truth. 
Only the cathedral, the front of the theatre, and some haciendas. 
The last it is too hot to visit ; the first is looked into, the second 
looked upon. I am in for a day here. There is no return stage 
till to-morrow at eleven. So I wander through the market-place, 
a dull spot, and soon exhausted ; where brass coin is all their cur- 
rency. Guanajuato touches nothing but silver. The plaza holds 
me longer. It has a very rich tropical garden, banana-trees, or- 
ange, and flowers of every hue. It has also around it broad shaded 
arcades lined with shops and stores. Nowhere have I seen so 
much of a display of dry goods. A whole side of the square is 
lined with these stores, and very fair in their attractions they are. 

The cathedral is after the usual sort, and not especially ornate. 



BLASPHEMY AND PERVERSION. 315 

Its specialty is blasphemy. Dancing girls, with their skirts open to 
the knee, are placed over the altar as the angels of the sepulchre 
or something, and over all is the image of God the Father, a gray- 
bearded old man, with the triangle of gold, sign of the Trinity, over 
his head. No wonder the first spelling-book for children, with its 
alphabet and a-b, ab, condenses the Ten Commandments, and puts 
the first one thus : "Amaras a Dios sobre todas las cosas " (Thou 
shalt love God above all things). That is the whole of it. Not 
a hint about this idolatry, which the original expressly prohibits. 
The commands of Sinai are perverted to their own idolatries. I 
bought this little tract in the market-place. It is sold by hundreds 
of thousands, and that is the way the Church wrests the Scriptures, 
may it not be added, " to her own destruction ?" 

The tedium of the day was greatly relieved by a horseback ride 
with an English resident, Mr. George Gray. I found out him and 
his brother, both bachelors, one a clock -maker, one a machinist, 
sons of a mine-worker who came out some forty years ago. The 
clock vender said business was dull. "Yankees like a clock in 
the house ; Mexicans, a saint," he said, half bitingly. But what 
use have they for clocks ? Time is of no account with them. 

His brother takes me to ride ; that is, lends me a horse, and goes 
with me. We drive among the small proprietors, to the east and 
north of the town. The gardens are green with irrigation. They 
are full of esculents, with little patches of flowers among their hon- 
est lettuce and maize, like a pretty and not useless child among her' 
industrious associates. It is difficult to raise wheat here. The land 
has to be flooded with water for a long time, and otherwise care- 
fully nurtured, and then it produces but little. Better exchange its 
silver for Minnesota's wheat. Both will profit by the change. 

Here are large fields laid down to chilli, a sort of pepper, 
almost the only condiment with their beans and cakes. Others 
are green, very, with alfalfa, or lucern, the favorite green food for 
mules and horses. It looks a little like clover, though seemingl}'^ 
richer and juicier. Many pastures are brown, awaiting the rain 
of heaven, and not that from the ground. Wells are busy. They 



3t6 our next-door NEIGHBOR. 

are dug two and two, together or opposite. The swinging sweeps, 
which once existed generally in the North, here stand together or 
over against each other, and the boys are plying them all day long. 
Thus the fields are always producing, and Nature never rests, if 
man often does. 

An old woman with a long stick having a knife on the end is 
cutting green buds from the prickly-pear {the nopal) that lines the 
roadside. " She is getting fish of the fence," said my friend. Not 
allowed to eat meat in Lent, they gather these buds, and cook them 
as a substitute. Hence this saying. The nopal is the fencing 
stuff of the country. It grows in orchards, grows along the way- 
side, wild and cultivated. It is as homely as the ass, of which it is 
the vegetable counterpart in universality, ugliness, and utility. 

It has one redeeming feature, as has also that creature. Its 
blossoms are beautiful. Seldom does one see more exquisite and 
delicate tints than break out all over these horrid bushes, and sel- 
dom does one see so exquisite and delicate a leg and foot on beast 
or bird, or man himself, as concludes with a good ending the ex- 
ceedingly bad beginning of the ass. It is straight, small, delicate, 
a natural Chinese beauty of ankle and hoof. The finest horse's 
leg and foot are coarse to it. So, if you will only look for it, you 
will find some redeeming trait in every creature of God. But this 
trait often makes the others more homely. Glance from a don- 
key's legs to his head and ears, and you are amazed at the terri- 
bleness of that opposite termination. You can not see how the 
two could possibly exist in the same creature. You even believe 
it to be a cursed degradation. It must be witchery. It can not 
be nature. So the nopal seems the uglier as you turn from its del- 
icate blossoms to its leather lap-stone leaf and ungainly trunk, and 
general asinine vegetable humiliation. 

But each serves quietly, says nothing, and waits patiently the 
hour when the fairy curse shall be removed, or that unfairy curse 
resting on all creation, the curse of sin, of Eden, and of man, and 
they shall have a complete symmetry after the exquisite fragments 
and indices that each now possesses. 



A PUBLIC FUNERAL. 



317 



AVe ride home among Indian huts, in a delicious sun-setting, un- 
der greenest of trees and among corresponding verdure. Along 
the banks of the almost waterless river, boys are flying kites, and 
women washing their few garments. A frock is on a bush, and a 
lady, in her reboza alone, is sitting in the stream, awaiting the dry- 
ing of her tunic. The dogs and children are enjoying themselves, 
as much, perhaps, as if they were the children and dogs of the 
Prince of Wales or President Grant. Possibly more. 




,^'.>S?^^(S-^> >_ , 



FUNERAL OF GOVERNOR MANUEL DOBLADG. 



We pass down a long street of one-storied houses. They are all 
of that height. Not six in the city are two-storied. The widow of 
Governor Don Manuel Doblado occupies one of the former sort. 
He died in New York, and it is thought would have been president 
had he lived. Her house is spacious, and has every luxury, includ- 
ing that best of luxuries, its height. A very sumptuous funeral was 
granted him in Guanajuato, as he deserved. 

Most of the houses are very poor, and the people look poorer 



3i8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

than the houses. Many are empty, the houses, and people probably 
also. Hither come thousands from San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, 
Guadilajara, and other points, when revolutions roll ; for the gov- 
ernor of this State will have peace if he has to fight for it. It is 
the State of Guanajuato, and that city gives the nerve that gives 
the peace. 

The next morning I attended high mass. It was St. Joseph's 
day, and held in high remembrance. So the bishop is out in his 
full and faded costume. A large number receive the wafer. A 
red-jacketed boy, followed the priest who gave the wafer, present- 
ing something like a love-feast ticket. Was it one? Have they 
revived that lost art of Methodism ? When the bishop entered, the 
crowd, dreadfully ragged and poor as most of them were, kneeled 
down the whole length of the church, making a narrow lane each 
side of him, and he stretched out his hands for them to kiss as he 
moved up to the altar. How eagerly they clutched at them ! I 
saw one old woman get the seal-ring to her lips. She looked as if 
she had touched heaven. I have seen others than uneducated pa- 
pists overworship their minister, but never so believingly and de- 
voutly as these. 

The ceremony is after the usual spread-eagle sort. A great 
crowd kneel at the beginning, but they come and go, and the shift- 
ing performance moves forward before a more shifting congrega- 
tion. This is the bishop who has since refused to obey the laws 
of the State enforcing toleration, and has called on his people to 
resist those laws. His ignorant followers could be easily worked 
up to persecution.* What would he have said had it been told him 
that among the spectators of his performances that morning was 
a minister of the anti-Roman Church, meditating on the coming es- 
tablishment of his Church in this city, and the extinction of this 
ruin of souls and faith in that purer doctrine and life ? Had he 
suspected so much, or had our priest of the coach-top dreamed it, 
there would have been small chance of that minister's having had 

* See Appendix A. 



SENSELESS IDOLATRY. ' 319 

much to do with that reformation. Would not that crowd have 
leaped on him, and sent him swift to Hades ? 

Around the uppermost balcony of the church are shields of 
green, with words in gold upon them. One whole side is appro- 
priated to Mary directly ; the rest possibly incidentally. Among 
her shields are those with these inscriptions : " Mater Creatoris," 
" Mater Salvatoris," " Virgo Potens," " Virgo Clemens " (Mother 
of the Creator, of the Saviour, Virgin Powerful, Merciful). The cen- 
tral and primal and ultimate idea of every motto is the Virgin. 
As if to refer all this to her, and give her at once divine honors, all 
the opposite side has such phrases as these : " Sedes Sapientiae," 
"Causa Nostrae Laetitiae," " Foedaris Area," "Janua Coeli," "Refu- 
gio Peccatorum," "Stella Matutina" (Seat of Wisdom, Cause of 
our Joy, Ark of Faith, Gate of Heaven, Refuge of Sinners, Morn- 
ing Star). 

These may refer to the Church herself, and not to Mary. But be- 
low, at an altar, she is called " Refugio Peccatorum," one of the very 
phrases found up here also. There is no hint that this is not in- 
tended. If so, then see how high a pitch of idolatry these priests 
and bishops have been guilty of, are guilty of to-day, in thus ascrib- 
ing all the work of salvation to Mary. The people believe it is so, 
whether they have themselves a sense by which they can escape or 
not. The crowd have none. The Church is the Church of the 
Virgin ; with her they rise or fall. 

A little image of the Virgin and the Child was being carried to 
a village by a few of its men, to grace a feast there. We passed it 
on our way back. On their shoulders they bore it, in a white box 
closed on all sides but the front, set off with flowers. It was sheer 
idolatry. Leon's cathedral has its graven god and worshiped wom- 
an, and poor ragged wretches for an audience. When will it re- 
ceive the true Gospel ? Not without difficulty. They are very fa- 
natical, these poor people. A German came here to preach, and 
they threatened him with a coat of tar and feathers, and he did not 
open his lips. They were the most reverential to the priests of any 
city I have been in. As I stood among the kneeling crowds of the 



320 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

cathedral, I noted more than one lowering countenance. Large 
numbers are at the earliest orisons and the latest vespers. The 
bells clang all day long. It is church, church, and nothing but 
church. There will be a big fight here before this Diana of Leon 
is dethroned. But it will come. These poor people inwardly sigh 
for a happy Christian experience. How happy they would be if 
they once experienced it ! How they would throw off their rags 
and rejoice in a religion that lifted up soul and body ! Pray for 
Leon, the city of superstition, that she may pre-eminently be the 
city of faith. 

Gladly is the coach welcomed the next morning, and the ride is 
taken, hot and dusty, to Guanajuato. 



INDIAN DANCERS. 



321 



V. 

A HORSEBACK RIDE OVER THE SILVER MOUNT- 
AINS. 

Indian Dancing and Gambling. — A sleeping City. — Wood and Coal Carriers. 
— Mineral de la Luz. — A Mountain Nest. — Sometimes up, sometimes down. 
— Berrying and Burying. — The Apple-tree among the Trees of the Wood. — 
Off the Track. — A funereal Tread. — Lunch in the Air. — The Plunge. — A 
Napola Orchard. — Out on the Plains. — Valley of the Sancho. 

I AM SO tired with fifty miles of horsebacking that I would glad- 
ly get to sleep, especially as I have to be up by three, and off again 
at four. But the sound of guitars and harps in the open court 
without our quarters, to which Indian girls are dancing, prevents 
that luxury. They must be very busy by the unceasing sounds 
that flow into my open window. It is an Indian festa purely, nei- 
ther Spanish nor Romish seeming to interfere with it. It is prob- 
ably as ancient as any Aztec event now in vogue. A half-dozen 
tents have a girl or two each, trained to great nimbleness of toes 
and heels, who skip double and quadruple measure and all sorts 
of shuffles to the quick time of the harp, singing, in Indian, a mur- 
murous accompaniment to the steps. The lookers-on can partici- 
pate with her for a real a round. Of course there are plenty of 
men of all ages ready to pay their "bit." So the old folks earn 
much money out of the feet of their daughters. 

Walking round these booths, I was invited by one of these ven- 
erable fathers to enter his shed. I assented, not knowing whither 
I went, for I had not yet spelled out the purport of the festa. He 
gave me the seat of honor, fronting the outside crowd. I soon saw 
the incongruity of my position, but was withheld from disturbing 
the meeting. It was the first ball I had seen since I was sixteen, 
when I had sat through the night a looker-on, as now. I was soon 



322 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

relieved of my unwilling bondage to courtesy. I retreated to the 
rear of the gazing crowd in good order. In the midst of the whirl, 
at my feet lay two small dogs, a white and a black, nose to nose, 
fast asleep. Two children, also white and black, I saw at a South- 
ern school festival, lying on a seat in like position, head to head, 
fast asleep. Each suggested peace and fraternity among both dogs 
and men, and no distinction on account of color. 

The dancing-girl was modest in her goings, which Christian (?) 
dancers are not. She allowed her partners none of the immodest 
privileges of the waltz and polka, and kept her dignity both of car- 
riage and conduct. The ballet troupes, cancan, and even the fash- 
ionable dancing of city balls are far less chaste. Civilization could 
get civilized at these festas. 

Gambling was going on as busily as dancing. Groups sitting on 
the ground were rapidly losing their centavos to the cool heads 
that held the pool. Thus the earnings of the girls slipped through 
their fathers' fingers into the hands of the Aztec John Oakhursts, 
who probably, like him of California, were exceedingly honorable 
to those they robbed, and so might well be portrayed by the over- 
turners of morality as the saints of their tribe. 

This show saluted me on arriving at this hacienda, after a long, 
wearisome, but repaying ride. Let us get away from these poor 
creatures into the grand mountains, and draw from them the rest 
and strength the god-tike creature man can not bestow. 

It was hardly day-break when I mounted my horse, and rode 
through the silent streets of Guanajuato — silent only for the little 
season from midnight to sunrise ; for no town of equal bustle have 
I seen in Mexico, and not many in the United States. Romantic 
in situation, and full of movement, it is one of the places one 
craves to see again. 

We climb up the stone stairs, up and up, steep almost as the side 
of a house, looking down on the sleeping city with its fifty thousand 
souls. What is more lonely than a great city with all its people 
asleep ? I have trembled with awe as that thought has struck me 
in a crowded population. All, as it were, dead ! Every house has 



A CHURCH ON A CLIFF. 323 

not only one, as did the Egyptian, but all dead. The rich are as 
poor as the poorest, perhaps poorer, in their dreams ; the poor rich 
as the richest, perhaps the richer in their dreams. The whole 
life wiped out, and as though it had never been. Ah, if only that 
unconsciousness could come after death, which some so anxiously 
seek to detect in the Word of God, but detect it not — an everlast- 
ing sleep — it would be a relief to the sinner! But it is not the 
revealed will of God thus to give relief to the sinner. He must 
dwell in his own consciousness. He that is filthy shall be filthy 
still. The lustful, the revengeful, the miserly, he shall still be 
possessed of his own passions. The saintly wife sleeping by the 
sinful husband may know no difference in this unconscious state ; 
but the first breath of the awakening morn reveals to each no more 
clearly their existence than it does their character. The saintly 
one is still saintly, the sinful, sinful. The first thought of one is 
a prayer, of the second, an oath. Before the lips are awakened 
the mind is, and the heart, and out of their abundance the mouth 
speaks. So will the slumber of the grave be broken. 

Eternity is not a sleep of the righteous or of the wicked, nor is it 
the sleep of one and not of the other. They are alike in their con- 
sciousness, as at the beginning; alike in their free choice; alike 
in their corresponding liberty of action ; alike in their inward con- 
stitution ; alike forever in heaven, forever in hell. 

A mile or more up, and we enter a little suburb, whose church, 
perched on a scarfed cliff, looks down the gorge into the city, and 
out far away into the valleys that open on Leon and Queretaro. 
How apt in location of their churches this Church ever is, apt for 
effect, not always for utility ! Here they combine, and the centre 
of the hamlet is the key of the landscape. 

Still up we go, meeting at this gray hour the descending labor- 
ers. Who is this coming forth to meet us, with his coffin on his 
back, or the coffin of some Goliath of the mountains ? It towers a 
yard above his head, and goes down his back to within a foot of 
his heels. If my fears had not pretty nearly given out by lack 
of any success in the employment of them (every attempt having 



324 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

been a failure), I might have got up a little excitement over this 
apparition. As it is, I calmly await its coming. It proves to be a 
wood-carrier, and the cofifin is a length of corded wood, lashed to- 
gether in a symmetric and solid shape, and stretching out its eight 
or ten feet, two feet in width, a burden not easily to be borne, one 
is sure, though these men, old and young, seem to carry it lightly. 
They bend under it, and take a staff to stay their steps down the 
headlong descent. They, however, have erectness enough to rec- 
ognize us, and give and get grateful "Adios." The charcoal burn- 
ers follow the fagot bearers. There are degrees in every thing. 
A fagot is less than a straight stick, but above a chip and a knot. 
The latter go into coal, which goes down behind its aristocratic 

kinsman. 

" Every thing's nothing except by position." 

They are compactly and prettily arranged. Bound together with 
nets and with wisps of green grass, arranged along the level side, 
which is laid against the back, they look ornamental even, and 
make the charcoalist a florist. Why not? His stuff is diamonds 
in disguise. Why should not its arrangement be crystalline ? 

The rise of the sun and of the path set the city below, and the 
mountains above, and the plains beyond in clearer light. The town, 
romantic from every point, is not the least so from this hill-top look- 
ing down. It is waking up, too, and the sound comes up hither of 
the crushing mills grinding the rocks into powder, of the water 
washing the powder into mud, of the mules treading the mud 
into chemical mire, and of the furnaces evolving the chemicals, and 
burning the white metal out of its ancient, and as it perhaps had 
thought, eternal, companions. The street-cries, the rattling carts, 
the living man awakening from his death, and coming out of his 
grave the same that he went in — all these salute us with the break- 
ing of the light over the mountains ; at least so far as these sounds 
can reach the ever-ascending sense. 

Not far to the west, on one of the peaks, lies a white cluster, 
called the Mineral de la Luz, or Luz alone, as these Yankeeized 
Mexicans cut it down. It is a famous mine, not now in its best 



^J^ EAGLE'S NEST. 325 

working order, but its yield has been wonderful ; and draining of 
superfluous water will doubtless restore it to its former pre-emi- 
nence of value akin to its pre-eminence of position. 

All around us rise these peaks of brown and gray, tall, even 
though their base is far above the snow-line of the Alps, and of 
every variety of shape, sharp, round, crater-like, cleft and gashed 
by the creative knife (as proper a figure as the "creative chisel," 
which has long been a stock-tool of the paragraphists). They are 
all probably full of silver, as the vast subterranean chambers of the 
chief mine of Guanajuato clearly illustrate. But the expense of dig- 
ging is costly. Mining is no luxurious idling, but steady and slow, 
with small gains. So these mountains await the men that are not to 
be put off by any coyness or resistance, but will compel them to yield 
up their treasures. It is not the kingdom of heaven only that suf- 
fereth violence, and which the violent take by force; it is every 
valuable kingdom, whether of wealth or wisdom, of place or power, 
of reform or religion. 

The sun comes up as we go down into the first of the valleys 
beyond this ridge, so many of which we must descend into and as- 
cend out of ere the long looked -for hacienda appears. Over to 
our left, perched on the side hill, high up among the clouds, is a 
pretty bit of a village, whose name I have forgotten, that is the 
home of the charcoal venders and wood-cutters, as pretty an eagle's 
nest as one often sees ; at least, at the distance of the mile or so 
which we are from it. Perhaps, like other eagle's nests, it would 
hardly bear examination. 

We take our last glimpse of the city beneath us, the hills hug- 
ging it' and bending over it, like a mother, or a dozen of mothers, 
fondling a childling. The plains of Queretaro and Leon glisten in 
the morning slantings, and Luz, like that of eld, sits at the top of 
the land, glowing like the silver at its bottom, responsive to the 
coming day. 

When I was a lad, I remember hearing a good brother of lim- 
ited variety of tones and themes engage in prayer. He almost al- 
ways had in his petitions this verse, expressed in a peculiar rising 



326 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

and falling sing-song. If the printers will help me, I will try and 
put the very tones in type : 

and ,0 ^, >, 



..% 



\ ..'■o^ *^ 






So, as we ascended and descended, I thought of the good broth- 
er's sing-song verse, and hoped that his successful accomplishment 
of his purpose, for he has long been in glory, might be not only 
exemplified in this minor effort, but in the major and maxima ones 
that absorb the whole life and being. 

We had been going up, up, up ; now we go down, down, downy. 
Far below the level of our original point of departure we plunge, 
sliding down on the close-set feet of the safe little Mexican horse, 
plunging through more than one degree of latitude. 

The top gave us the high blue-berry bush just blossoming, a dear 
reminder of boyish tramps in Lynde's Woods, yet uncut, but every 
day in danger of the knife of the spoiler. May some good provi- 
dence turn them to a use that shall perpetuate both their memories 
and their berries ! A big town, well-nigh a city, is growing to them. 
If it would only appropriate them to a cemeter}'^, how happy would 
one wanderer be to come and haunt them occasionally while living, 
and to sleep under them at the last, in age, even as he has slept 
under them often in happy days of a vanished childhood, awaiting 
the call of the clarion of the resurrection. Grand old trees, dear 
high blue-berry bushes, lowly huckleberry bushes, not the less love- 
ly for your sweet humility. 

" The lark that soars the nearest heaven 
Builds on the ground his lowly nest." 

So these humble bushes, where we sat and picked and laughed, 
and strove as to who should first fill his pail, and broke them in 
big armfuls, and took them to the shelter of the big trees for cool- 
er stripping, how your black eyes now beam upon me, little lus- 



•■'AMONG THE TREES OF THE WOOD:' 327 

cious beads of light and life, through these long, long years ! Ah, 
save, oh good fathers of my old home town, save us the Lynde's 
Woods, where we so often went a-berrying, for our own time-long 
burying. What a life-pleasure a boy bred in the country has over 
the city lad who only visits it on vacation ! It is a joy and strength 
all his days ; none the less so, if his after-life is passed among brick 
walls and stone pavements which give scarce a glimpse of eithei- 
earth or heaven. 

This high blue-berry bush on this high Mexic mountain has set 
me off on a high horse that is in danger of throwing me ; for senti- 
ment is the last thing any body allows in any body else but them- 
selves. Balance is restored by the venerable nopal, better known 
as cactus, that stands stiff and changeless among these Northern 
reminders. No cactus is found by New England roadsides and 
country lanes. This is tropical and new. It is of yesterday to the 
land, but of to-day to the traveler. He can not shed imaginary 
tears over its earlier suggestions. The laurel is also here, begin- 
ning to put forth those pinky-white buddings that shall soon burst 
into complete blossomings. So the North country again appears, 
though this crown of poets and favorite of Apollo is a Greek rather 
than a Yankee. 

The bottom of the hill brings us to a cluster of huts perched on 
the steep side of the opposite mountain. We pace along its base 
for some distance, enjoying the odor of its flowers, cultivated and 
wild, and especially the bloom and balm of its apple-trees. These 
are bursting into flower, not the broad, grand, full blossom of the 
North, where it really belongs, but still of the old blush and bloom. 
They are scattered all along the river's &dge, where only wild trees 
besides are found ; and, amidst the flowerless and odorless boughs 
of ash and birch and oak and nopal, one feels more than ever the 
force of that compliment and comparison which the love-lorn wife 
pays her husband, in the song of songs which is Solomon's, "As 
the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved 
among the sons." One sees the exquisite beauty of that compli- 
ment in these gorges of the Cordilleras, where the apple-tree stands 

22 



328 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

among the trees of the wood, clad in its many-colored robe, fra- 
grant with that odor that gives it the headship in sweetness over 
all the trees of the garden. It is not impossible that this is the 
very tree of which Eve partook, and that its Edenic supremacy is 
still not largely lost. Whether so or no, the loving wife was righi 
in her comparison, and this wood proves true, in that respect, that 
song of monogamy by a polygamic transgressor, that song of the 
spiritual longings and lovings of the Church and her husband, the 
Christ : "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my 
beloved among the sons." 

We cross the brook we had sauntered near so long, and pull up 
a steep grade j in fact, get off and pull our horses up, it is so steep. 
The road becomes less and less a road, and my guide is bewil- 
dered. He has lost his path. It is the second time already, and 
we not a quarter of our journey done. Across the ravine he spies 
a wood-cutter, and speaks softly to him. It is remarkable how low 
a voice they use in making inquiries. His was not above a draw- 
ing-room pitch. Is it humility or good breeding? A little of both, 
probably. The wood-cutter answers alike softly, but distinctly; 
we drag our horses down again, recross the brook, which we should 
have ever kept on our left, and pull up a steeper pitch, pass our 
wood-cutting .befriender, through another long and shaded and lus- 
cious ravine — how summery cool it was ! — and out upon a rancho, 
the midway spot of the journey. 

The men and women and babies stared respectfully, and said 
"Adios" prettily. The men take off their hats usually as they meet 
us, especially the elderly ones. The young ones, if not very young, 
are more independent. 

The rancho leads us up on the tepitati (I spell by the ear), a 
volcanic rock that is hardly a rock. It seems soft, and sounds hol- 
low. It whitens under the hoofs of horses, and glistens like mar- 
ble dust in the hot glare. It abounds all over this land ; 3^ou strike 
it on almost every road, a soil seemingly without possibility of cul- 
ture, yet a substance used in lighter buildings. It is a long climb 
up its white face, along a white ridge, and up another like white 



LUNCH UNDER A CACTUS -TREE. 329 

ladder, to the crest of our road. The path is worn in its chalk-like 
surface, now in narrow grooves, scarce wide enough for the two 
legs of the steed to stand in, now over long slippery slides, now 
into stairs of unequal length, but of uniform smoothness, while the 
echo of the tread seems ever to make us shrink and heed that or- 
der of Emerson's, 

" Set not thy foot on graves." 
"The ground sounds hollow from below," 

is Watts's nervous putting of our mortal estate. It is not inapplica- 
ble here, on perhaps the highest point my feet have trod in all this 
exalted land. As these loftiest places of earth sound hollow, so 
do the loftiest stations of man. The ground beneath the feet of 
kings and potentates is not the echoless granite, but the reverber- 
ating tepitati. It is rotten, barren, glittering, resounding dust. 

" Princes, this clay shall be your bed." 

Nay, more ; you are of the same clay. Let us take the lesson 
to heart which the topmost soil that we touch on the continent so 
sadly preaches. 

Here we take a lunch oipan y mantiquia, bettter known to you 
as bread-and-butter, a piece of roast beef, and some German-made 
tarts that had, therefore, a tart in them, which Mexican dulces never 
have. Always choose well your table, if you can not your food. 
Where is a better place than this highest point in our pilgrimage ? 
So we spread our lunch under a not-spreading cactus-tree. It 
makes me think of Elijah's juniper-tree, for it gives but little shade 
from a torrid sun, in a mountainous land. But it is something to 
eat a slice of meat and bread under a not-spreading cactus-tree. 
It will do to tell of, and it is told of Then judgment gets the 
better of sentiment, and I adjourn my spreading limbs and spread 
bread to the large-leafed robli ; so my guide told me to spell it. 
It is a sort of oak, with large leaves, some green, some brown. It 
gives shade, and the breeze gives coolness. 

The view from this apex is grand. The hills, of all sorts of 
strange shapes, rise all about us, for miles and miles. Just below 



33P OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

is a hollow that has a bit of a white chapel, a few brown huts, a' 
green sweet sward, and a glimmering of water; how I wish for a 
drop of it to cool my parched tongue, and wish in vain ! Shall I 
' ever have a like powerless craving from the opposite of this sum- 
mit ? Christ forbid ! yet if another feared lest, having preached to 
others, he himself should be a castaway, how much more I ! The 
basin looked, among these hard, stern, rough mountains, like the 
" Luck of Roaring Camp" among its hard, stern, rough protectors ; 
only these mountains never swore, nor drank, nor gambled, nor 
murdered, nor were in any respect unfit protectors to the babe 
they embosomed. Would that their human imitators were as hu- 
man ! 

They assume strange shapes. One of them lifts itself out an 
encompassing plain, like a bowl bottom side up and the bottom 
broken off, so that you can look into its hollow from its ragged 
edge, down side up. Others bend themselves in huge concentric 
arcs that look like the same bowl, with one-half of its already be- 
headed, or bebottomed, portion cut away from it, exposing to view 
the inside of tha remaining part — a hollow hemisphered, truncated 
cone. Others look after the fashion of hills elsewhere, only hand- 
somer, very smooth domes and cones of glistening rock. Among 
them glided, like huge mottled snakes, pastures brown and gray 
with stones and winter herbage, waiting the rains that shall clothe 
these rocky fields in " a mist of greenness," the motded snake 
turning to its greener kindred. So precious are the bits of soil in 
this almost soilless region that you can trace the boundary lines of 
these patches far up the sides of the mountains. 

Far away to the north and east, the grand plains above Quere- 
taro roll out, a scroll written over with industry and its rewards. It 
will be yet better written, when this age shall be a palimpsest for 
the one, near at hand, of equal rights, higher faith, universal culture, 
and social reform. How intense the solitude of these mountains ; 
how profound their silence ! It is a stillness that can be felt. Not 
a bird wings its way across the summits, or sends an echo along 
their sides ; not an insect hums. No leaves 



A DESCENDING ROAD. - 331 

" Clap their little hands in glee 
With one continuous sound." 

Yet there is strength in all this calm. " He settetli fast the mount- 
ains," is the emblem of Divine omnipotence, "being girded with 
power." But these mountains are not always set fast. The "ever- 
lasting hills do bow." Here, not unfrequently, they tremble and 
bow. Is it " at the presence of the Lord, of the Lord of the whole 
earth ?" Why not ? Is not this as proper a solution of that phys- 
ical problem as those less spiritual ? " For He cometh, He com- 
eth to judge the earth." Does any earth need His coming to judg- 
ment more ? " He shall judge the people righteously." Even so. 
" Bend the heavens and come down." 

" Earth, tremble on, with all thy sons ;" 

and may His feet be on the mountains, publishing peace, and giv- 
ing them, and all that they inhabit, everlasting righteousness and 
rest. 

Our road soon descends again, more rapidly than it went up, 
though not more easily. It hangs half a thousand feet over a ba- 
sin edged with a flowing river, skirts the rancho of Sancho (an al- 
literation not our own), with its tiny field of wheat and plat of gay 
flowers, and little peach-orchard, with flowers and half-grown fruit 
on adjoining trees. It is lovely in all save its dogs and their own- 
ers. How can nature be so grand and lovely, and man and worn - 
an so mean and unlovely ? 

" Like vermin crawling on a lion's crest," 

said Tom Moore, bitterly and not untruly, of Americans more than 
a half century ago. It is not untrue of some of these Americans 
to-day. But Christianity is coming. It has never really got here 
yet, and we shall see these "vermin" pretty, cleanly, cultured men 
and women. The girl that gave us a cup of cold water, or as cold 
as her cabin afforded, and illuminated my mozo with her smile, as 
well as with her answers to his inquiries, shall not she and her kin, 
who bow and take off their sombreros and salute us so courteously 



332 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

over the wheat plat, yet arise from their hovels into comely homes, 
and be all beautiful in condition as in possibility? 

It is a long following of a dry river-bed, crossing and recrossing 
its loose rocks many times under a sultry sun, before we strike a 
rattling brook of delightful water, and a hill-side that looked as if 
covered with an apple-orchard, and must certainly reveal a white 
house amidst its green foliage. It is a nopal, or cactus, orchard, 
and no white cottage glimmers among its leather lapstone-shaped 
leaves, but only the same adobe hut, the same half-naked women, 
three-fourths naked men, seven-eighths naked youths, and entirely 
naked children, all sitting on the bare ground in poverty and deg- 
radation extreme, yet as courteous and kindly as the princeliest 
soul in the princeliest palace. 

We pass through this nopal-orchard, with its many-tinted blos- 
soms and small egg-like fruit, and emerge on a wide plain. Our 
steps have turned a little too far to the south. A kindly-voiced 
native, neatly dressed in white, with a blue girdle about his loins, 
gives us directions, and our untired horses step away, sobre passo, or 
the " overstep," the favorite pace of long day traveling. Another 
rancho is traversed of like disgust and like courtesy ; a high, hot, 
shadeless hill is mounted ; a hotter canon crossed ; another long 
plain traversed ; another rancho, with its organ-cactus walls, is en- 
tered and left ; a long stretch of open upland paced over. The 
"cinquo leguas " (five leagues), gradually diminishes to "quatuor, 
tres, dos y medio " (two and a half) or " dos, mas y menos " (two, 
more or less), where it hangs a long while. At last an adobe cot- 
tage close to a waterless river-bed is reached, whose pretty maid- 
enly girl says it is "una legua" (one league). For that informa- 
tion, as well as for her pretty ways and name (Arabella it was), and 
for the abundant and cooling water she gave us, we responded with 
mille gracias (a thousand thanks), the debris of our dinner, and a 
medio. Which of the three prized she the most, think you ? A 
miss of fourteen would not hold the medio in chief esteem. That 
her mother prefers, and she the cakes and compliments. Suum 
cuique. Each gets her owm, and all of us are satisfied. 



THE VALLEY 'OF LA CAM ADA. ' 333 

The dry brook, with its superabounding rocks, is our highway for 
over a mile. A huge rock rising from its brink, is the last lesting- 
place for horse and rider. It is of clay or soil of the country, and 
has embedded several strata of loose stones, as if formed by the 
deposits of freshets, and then left for the sun to bake into a solid 
pudding. The epizootic shows its green presence around the nos- 
trils of the mozo's horse — a going and not a coming presence — 
which has notwithstanding walked and paced its nigh to fifty miles, 
patiently and pleasantly, and will rewalk it homeward on the mor- 
row. 

The high-road is soon struck, and the Valley of La Camada lies 
before us, like every valley of Mexico, a thing of beauty rare. The 
brown earth, soft and sown, awaits the coming rain that shall fill 
it with life. The silver-gray hills lie near us, seemingly, though a 
score of miles away, bare of all save sunlight. The river Sancho 
winds, broad and shaded, along the foreground ; broad in its plans 
and ultimate fulfillment, though now it is dwindled to a shorter 
span along the farther bank and under the willows thereof, while 
grass is springing up in its bed on this side, and the cattle are eat- 
ing it. Trees and grasses make this central line a line of beauty 
which, were we less tired, would be lingered over longer. But this 
fifty miles by an unused rider has made back and brains give out, 
and the plaza of the hacienda is more fascinating than all fields, or 
brooks, or trees, or grasses, or cows, or any other creature. The In- 
dian festa, with its chirruping guitars and twinkling feet, is alike 
unheeded. The court is entered, and the couch is sought, and on 
its restful bosom all the mountain climbings and anti-climbings, 
and all the scenes and musings thereto belonging, are as though 
they had never been. 



334 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



VI. 

TO AND IN SAN LUIS POTOSI 

Aztec Music. — Low-hung but high-hung Clouds. — Troops and Travelers. — A 
big, small Wagon. — Zeal of San Felipe. — Lutero below Voltaire. — Rough 
Places not Smooth. — Mesquite Woods. — Silver Hills. — Two Haciendas. — 
How they Irrigate. — Lassoing. — The Frescoes of Frisco. — Cleft Cliffs. — The 
Valley of San Luis Potosi. — Greetings and Letters. — The Church of Mary. — 
The coming Faith. — A costly and Christly Flag. — Joseph and Mary wor- 
shiped in vain for Rain. 

How different the strains that fell upon the ear last night and 
those that are now addressing us ; and both are musical ! Then 
it was the dancing-girls' guitars and harps, making a twitter as of 
caroling swallows. Now it is a Gov^ernment band that, on a broad 
and lighted plaza, discourses music that even Berliners would walk 
around to hear, especially if they could soon thereby reach a beer- 
stall. These Government bands are found in all the large towns, 
and are a great source of pleasure to the citizens. They play twice 
or thrice a week, and draw many loungers and listeners to their 
soirees. They are exceedingly refined in their touch. You never 
heard a clearer, softer note than that flute is now trilling ; and the 
airs are gentle and recondite. How one forgets the long hard 
ride of more than eighty miles, the slow pulling along over heavy 
and rocky roads, as he listens to these rich strains ! 

" Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears ; soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony." 

The country and the people are made for music. Remember 
that all these players are Indians, "brown as the ribbed sea-sand," 
and a good deal browner than any I ever saw — brown as the old 
red sandstone. Are they made from that antique dust.'' All these 
are admirable performers. I have never seen a white face among 



OFF FOR SAN LUIS POTOSI. ' 33^ 

them. In Mexico and all the cities of the land they are of one 
hue. The passion of the people is for music. The upspringing 
Protestant churches are bursting forth in song. As this hard, dry 
soil breaks forth in flowers the instant it scents the water, so the 
water of life touches their parched and barren souls, and they flow- 
er into song. I heard a poor untrained clothes-cobbling sister and 
her daughter sing the " Gloria in Excelsis " as I never heard Trin- 
ity or the Tremont Street choir approach ; so simple, so full of soul, 
so grand, so upswelling. They bring forth new songs day by day. 
Once visiting their house (the husband is a preacher), they sang 
me Juan Bron. I was surprised to find my old friend John Brown 
in this new shape. How it rung, especially the chorus, closing 
with "Al Cristo alevad!" (praise to Christ), They had set it to 
the praise of the Creator, Christ ; for it is as easy for them to make 
poetry as it is to make tunes. Their gifts of improvisation are 
Italian. Our frequently no browner brother of the South is their 
only equal in this respect, but he has not that operatic quality, 
that delicate tone, which belongs to this people. 

Then the climate helps the gift. It is just the air for song. It 
is never too hot nor too cold in the evening, the time for music. 
Every night they can revel in this relief. Their burdened bodies 
and souls- can rise on these wings of song to a realm of rest and 
joy. But this band must not beguile us from our purpose. The 
rather let them accompany us on our story of the journey, making 
its rough places smooth with their melody. 

It is a good trait of this staging that it begins in the fresh of the 
morning. You get a good start of the sun, and the hot centre of 
the day is given to breakfast and to rest. So I am up at a little 
after three, take two cups of delicious coffee and milk, and a sin- 
gle roll, and go in the strength of that beverage and bread till mid- 
day. One cup is the usual allowance, but, being tired, I treat my- 
self to a second cup of hot milk with a suspicion of coffee therein. 
It is also odd that one feels little desire for more food or ere the 
ordinary hour for dinner arrives — so easily we can get accustomed 
to our condition. 



336 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



Rain had fallen in the night, and clouds, as the morning broke, 
appeared, hugging the bases of the hills. They almost swept down 
on us with their wet wings. Had they been in action they would 
have done so. Low to us, they were high in the heavens, being 
two miles above Vera Cruz or London, a high point for raining 
clouds to hang. 

They do not hide the landscape, which lies wide, and level, and 
rich, and cultivated, a grand plain, like so many of Mexico. Sol- 
diers pass us, dressed in the white costume of the country ; artil- 
lery-men follow, five cannon, drawn each by ten mules, and their 
attendant caissons ; cavalry and commander}^ — quite a detachment 
of an army. Their faces and shoulders are wrapped in their bright 
zerapes, not so soldier-like as comfortable. Following them are a 
score and more of heavily laden wagons, each drawn by a like 
number of mules, and each having a goodly company of men, wom- 
en, and babies on the top 
of the baggage, one woman 
sitting on the beam (I know 
not its farmer name) that 
passes from the wagon to 
the oxen's yoke, as I have 
seen many a farmer at 
home ride, but never be- 
fore, his spouse. 

Following these are the 
other mule wagons of or- 
dinary luggage, a baggage- 
wagon like that of the 
States, except that this is 
half as long and well-nigh 
twice as high. Perched up 
on tall wheels, and its ma- 
guey-cloth roof, covering wide flaunting bows, it seems a mon- 
strous affair, till you get close to it, when you find all this enor- 
mous height and swell is only two wheels long — half the length you 








MEXICAN MULETEER. 



FOUR APOSTATES. ' 337 

anticipated, and that its pretensions required. It is a little giant, 
and is not unlike many another swell who begins his career much 
bigger than he ends. 

This multitude of teams shows the readiness of this country for 
the railroad, as the level land shows its fitness. There is no doubt 
that a road, well and wisely made, will be a paying investment 
from the start. 

The city of San Felipe is our first stopping-place. It is a largish 
town of five thousand inhabitants, dirty and adobe in most of its 
streets and houses, gayly got up, with colored washes and fancy 
figurings in its plaza and neighborhood. The time for changing 
horses allows me to visit the church. It is about eight in the morn- 
ing, and fifty to seventy-five persons are at worship, while a priest 
is delivering the consecrated wafer to an altar full of coming and 
going recipients. At the corner near the entrance is a painting on 
the walls of the church, with the face of a woman, but habited as a 
pope, with the triple crown on her head, and two angel boys offer- 
ing her an open book, on which is written in Latin, " The Word 
was made flesh." Her right hand is waving authority to lightnings 
that are diving at the heads of four apostates, who are disappear- 
ing under their forked fires, while over them is written, '"''Qui ecde- 
siam lion audierifit, sittibi Sicut Ethniciis et Fublicanus^' — Matt.xviii., 
17 (Whoever will not hear the church, let him be unto thee as 
a heathen man and a publican). Now who do you suppose that 
verse and these lightnings were hurled at by that female pope of a 
church ? Arreo, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Lutero. The last was the 
lowest, as if the quickest to sink into hell. That painting was fresh, 
and put up by some priest who scented what was in the air, and is 
getting the people ready to resist its coming. But Luther will be 
erased yet from those walls, and the triple crown from the head of 
the church ; and those poor sisters, that are only allowed half the 
sacrament, shall enjoy the whole supper of the Lord in company 
with the disciples of this Lutero. 

The road soon enters a divide, which is rough, though not high 
nor long. An attempt is made to have a smooth and handsome 



338 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

road, and this succeeds for a few rods, and shows what might be 
everywhere, were a little constant care kept up. It soon gets tired 
of being good, like a spoiled and wayward child, and cuts up badly, 
as such a child is apt to do after its fit of momentary excellence. 
It goes round the spurs of hills staggering fearfully, and makes us, 
who are two only, stagger as bad as the road and worse. There 
are two ways to arrange for traveling safely over rough regions: 
one is to make the road good, the other to make the coach strong. 
They prefer the latter course here, or rather the diligence company 
do that for the preservation of their custom and coaches. So you 
have no fears, how much soever you are knocked about, that the 
coach will be knocked to pieces. It is made to stand, and it will 
stand. Never a lesion have I seen in these hundreds of leagues 
of travel, and over intolerable ways. They tumble into holes, 
whirl and toss and heave among loose boulders, or rocks in situ., 
down hill and up, trembling sometimes like a ship struck by mighty 
waves, but never springing a leak, or shivering a timber, or loosen- 
ing a brace. They reel out of the rocky gulfs, and are off on a gal- 
lop in an instant, if road permits. 

These low but tortuous and tossing hill-sides open shortly on an- 
other valley more attractive to the eye than the one just left, in that 
this is full of foliage. As far as the eye can see, it is one mass of 
feathery green. But all is not gold that glitters, or silver, even in 
Mexico, and this fascinating woodland turns out to be cheap mes- 
quite and cheaper nopal, or cactus, that are growing wild. It is 
an uncleared forest. Still, an uncleared forest is a novelty here 
as well as in most of the United States, and will soon be in all 
parts of both countries ; so I like it perhaps none the less. 

The mesquite is not unlike the Peru, and both resemble in some 
sort our willow, except that these grow everywhere, the dryest places 
suiting the Peru just as well as the moistest. It spreads like the 
apple and peach, though lighter of trunk than the former, and not so 
loose in the lay of its limbs as the latter. It bears a pod, which is 
sought as an esculent. These woods are encompassed with high 
bare hills, those on the left hand beina: not over a leasfue from the 



TIVO VAST ESTATES. 339 

roadway. They are of the type that lay behind La Camada, a gray 
and silver frame to that fair picture. The hills may not all be full 
of silver, but they all suggest it. They are all of the same blood 
as the silver mountains proper, and put on airs as become the kin 
of so rich a house. They are basaltic almost in their castellated 
forms, and look rather like a column of giant "graybacks" open- 
ing their serried ranks to let this column of green, and perhaps this 
coach and company also, march through. 

Our change of mules is made in the heart of this forest. The 
turtle-dove {palumbra triste, they call it here) fills the air with his 
melancholy wail, a single note of the whip-poor-will's strain. Wom- 
en are frying and men eating tortillas under a cactus by the way- 
side ; the vista opens deep into the green forest, and every thing 
is quiet, soft, salubrious. One could almost make himself into a 
Robin Hood, and live his life in this secluded richness. How won- 
derfully human nature adapts itself to its condition ! We go from 
mountain to sea, from cell to city, with a zest for each that seems 
insatiate. But only one offers its attractions at a time. We can 
not at once sail the sea and climb the mountain, unless it be a 
mountain wave. We are like the lad who wished every season 
might last forever, and was met with a record of his contradictory 
wishes at the end of the year. 

They are not contradictory ; for we are so fortunately as well as 
wonderfully made, that we like truly and with all our heart the con- 
ditions in which we are placed. Thus the Creator fits the cloth- 
ing of the world to the shape of the soul. Whatever be that ward- 
robe, it seems a part of the spiritual being whom it incloses, and ev- 
ery place affords a sympathy with every fibre of that being. 

" Where it goeth all things are, 
And it goeth everywhere." 

The two haciendas are called San Bartoleo and Goral. They 
are practically one. From six to eight thousand persons live on 
these vast estates ; from four to five hundred men are employed in 
their cultivation. They and their families absorb the chief of the 



340 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



population. The rest, as in all the pueblos, or towns, find their lit- 
tle livelihood as they can, carrying burdens, driving mules, here a 
very little, and there still less. 

The grand house at the hacienda of Goral is elaborate enough 
for a castle or a convent, the two biggest things in this country. 
Its high front wall is set off with square pink blocks of water-color, 
and it looks big enough for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth 
and her retinue. The contrast between this palace and the clay- 
colored adobe huts about it is painful, though it is universal out- 
side of the United States, but nowhere else more violent and ex- 
treme than here. 

The fields lie wide and magnificent before it ; but the fields are 
not for the tillers. For a real a day or thereabouts they work and 
starve ; for nothing a day this gentleman idles and abounds. I 
think some of the most scared anti-agrarians would be almost as 
fanatical and wise as Wendell Philips, the wisest man as well as 
the most eloquent of his generation, could they but look on these 
Mexican pictures. How much better are the huge manufactur- 
ing corporations, and railroad monopolies, and land-grabbers of the 
United States ? Take heed in time, and let Christianity have its 
perfect work, or antichristianity will have its. 

Curious grain vaults are on its plaza, pyramids or cones built of 
mortar, thirty feet high, for the storing of the harvests. The reason 
for this shape I did not learn. They give a quaint air to the plaza. 
A school and two churches and a half-dozen begging old women 
help break up the monotony of scenery and silence of this grand 
farm-house. The lordly owner ought at least to take care of his 
own paupers, and not allow them to prey on the traveler. 

The wild wood, after leaving this posta, soon gets inclosed in a 
wall on the right hand, too high for us in the coach to see whether 
it be still a forest, or has become a fruitful field. It is a part of 
two haciendas in name, and one in fact, that stretch all this posta 
and beyond, from four to five leagues, from ten to twelve miles. 
The wall is admirably built of stone well capped, or of adobe brick, 
its only fault being that it is too high for our heads. Glimpses oc- 



A FRACTIOUS "BE AS TIE:' . 341 

casionally show much culture, and a ride on the stage-top afterward 
exhibits a wide range of rich fields. All of it could be subdued 
easily. It only wants water. And that is obtained by the simple 
digging of wells. You can see them all over this land. They are 
usually of the old-fashioned Yankee sort, a pole balanced on a 
cross-bar, with a stone at one end and a bucket at the other. The 
drawers of water stand two and two, either side by side or front to 
front, so that they can stimulate each other in their work. Some- 
times they arise to the aristocracy of a horse turning over a wheel 
around which buckets are fastened that catch the water below, and 
dip it up, and turn it into troughs and tanks. This for surface 
wells. Deep ones have still a different way of being operated. A 
large cowskin bucket hangs by a pulley over the well. The rope 
passes over this pulley and is passed round a big wheel, or barrel, 
six feet in diameter, a hundred feet away. The horse pulls the 
rope around this wheel and so hoists the water to the trough. 

Still other modes are used, but the chief is the old beam and the 
double man-power. We can save all drought in the States by these 
and more simple and cheap appliances. The long dry seasons to 
which we are not unfrequently doomed can be remedied by these 
preparations. It is far better for the farmer to be thus busy than 
to sit and .see his crops perish of thirst. They will not cost much 
to get ready, if they are not used, and will repay all their expense 
in a single year of drought. 

The hacienda continues for two or three miles, blasted outside 
its walls, luxuriant within. It closes with a handsomely construct- 
ed corral, into which a company of horsemen are driving a herd 
of cattle. One of the younger fry, not having learned the futility 
of all attempts to escape, breaks away from the herd and scampers 
adown the field. Instantly three of the horsemen race after it. 
It is an unequal contest from the start. The little black " beastie " 
shows pluck. But they are too much for him, those three men 
and three horses. Forty feet off out flew the lasso, and caught 
him just where it aimed, around the horns. They can grip any- 
where, it is said — hoof, ear, horn. An enthusiastic laudator of their 



342 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

skill, who said they could fasten their lasso where they wished, was 
asked if they could catch hold the tip of the tail. He has not 
answered yet. The heifer casts itself on the ground ; but it is no 
use. Its fight is fought, and it has lost. It surrenders, and trots 
submissively into the corral. 

The country still holds its wildness, whiteness, and greenness. 
For a dozen miles the road winds in and out among the mesquite- 
trees, a good pathway and exceedingly romantic. It enters then 
the pretty town of San Francisco. 

No village so ornate in water-color frescoes have I seen in Mex- 
ico as this bit of a city. Irapuato is its only rival, and that is not 
so daintily touched up. The hand of a master is here. Look at 
that drinking-saloon on the south-west corner of the plaza. Nev- 
er was an inner fresco of a Parisian parlor more beautiful. The 
straw-tinted wall is bordered at top and bottom with mode colors, 
representing cornices and pediments of variegated marble, rich and 
strong and delicate. La Plaza it is called : it deserves a better 
business. All round the square this passion vages. It has caught 
the church, which rejoices in its blue and white dress. All are 
more pronounced than the La Plaza, which has touched perfec- 
tion's height in this cheap and pretty adornment. A statue in the 
square is an additional proof of the taste of the inhabitants, 

Jesus Maria is the next dirty village, a good name for a Naza- 
reth of a town. 

Arroyas, the changing-place for the mules, has two or three huts, 
one of which without chimney was full of smoke of a tortilla-frying 
fire. At the other were a half-dozen ancient oranges, of which the 
lady sent me one by her little six-year-old boy, and which I as gen- 
erously gave to the mozo, sending her back my card for lack of a 
more valuable commodity less than two reals, which I thought too 
much for such a compliment. You will find it, doubtless, on her 
card-rack when you pass through that station. 

Now comes another hard pull over the uncovered rocks. Where 
the soil is on, the road is good ; but where it is off, no attempts are 
made to replace it, and we stagger along on the bed rock which 



THE VALLEY OF SAN LUIS. 343 

the one or two feet of loam has left in some summer shower for 
parts unknown. The hills lose none of their grandeur. In fact, 
they increase therein. Nowhere in the country have I seen a more 
magnificent colonnade than accompanied us, on our left, this last 
ten miles. It was close at hand, and we could see far into the 
depths of these cavernous cliffs. Here are truncated cones, with 
their craters lying open half-way down their sides, a hollow to 
which sun and cloud-shadow give yet greater effect. Other por- 
tions of the vast facades are rent in twain from the top to the bot- 
tom. Chasms, hundreds of feet deep and wide, wind inward, and 
present, from this distance, rare effects. What would not nearer 
views afford ? 

The road rocks its way along on the level earth at the foot of 
this cliff range, and begins to slightly ascend a more ridgy but 
not more rough path, and suddenly the Valley of San Luis Potosi 
breaks magnificently on the sight. How exceedingly fortunate is 
Mexico in the location of her cities ! If great rivers elsewhere 
flow by great towns, as Nature is said to condescend to man, here, 
for lack of great rivers, she surrounds the chief towns with superb 
circles of field, lake, wood, and hills — always the last, and one or 
more of the other three. Mexico has lakes for her chief circlet, 
a necklace of pearls : Puebla and Queretaro and Leon, fields of 
greenest green and brownest brown ; Guanajuato is bound about 
with mountains only and closely; and San Lui-s Potosi with forests, 
a necklace of emeralds. The woods fill all the hollow for twen- 
ty miles by fifty, as seen from this slight eminence. Two villages 
peep above them, at least their church towers do, all that usually 
have height or right to arise and shine. La Pila the nearest one is 
called. The other perches on a shelf beyond the woods and un- 
der the hill-sides. To the north, look, and amidst the foliage you 
see many a steeple and dome, with which the setting sun is play- 
ing. The trees hide every thing but those dancing lights on the 
church tops. Even in the chief cities every thing is lowly but the 
church. That is every thing. San Luis Potosi is that congrega- 
tion of flashing minarets, the chief city of Central Mexico. All 

23 



344 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

over the green valley are corresponding points of glittering gray 
and gold, telling where subordinate churches rule subordinate 
towns. Clouds that have hugged us close all day lift a little to let 
us drink in the beauty of the scene. They break clear away from 
before the face of the sun, and let him smile his p^rtingpax vobis- 
cum. It is a picture long to be remembered. 

The fields are not all woods as you approach them. Those near 
us have them scattered over the plowed grounds, as elms stand in 
the heart of New England pastures, and maples in those of New 
York and Pennsylvania. The Peru or pepper tree grows to an 
elm and maple size and beauty in these rich spots, and sets oif the 
fields as well as its statelier sisters. The effects of irrigation are 
seen in the barren and utterly worthless common, one side of the 
roadway, and the dark, loamy, fruitful soil on the other. It sepa- 
rates the sheep and the goats. Natures human so near are often 
as far apart in real condition : all for the want, or the posses- 
sion, of grace. Not Athabesca's divide alone sends its streamlets 
to opposite seas and eternities ; this dusty roadway is a like di- 
vision between life and death. Every path of life reveals the 
same profound, perpetual departure, each from each, forever and 
forever. 

The mules change their slow pull into a gallop, and go, lashed 
and leaping, through the streets to the plaza of the city. This 
northernmost of the central cities has but little in it that is attract- 
ive to a sight-seer, but much that will draw the heart of the Chris- 
tian, much over which to grieve, much already over which to re- 
joice. It was good to meet on the hotel stairs the greeting of 
Rev. Mr. Thomson, the Presbyterian missionary, located here. He 
had been here six months, and this was the first opportunity he had 
had to take a brother by the hand ; so our joy was mutual. Satur- 
day was spent in that most delightful of tasks, the reading of the 
mail. It had followed me from Mexico, and I greeted the far-off" 
faces of home and friends in this unexpected place. How doub- 
ly dear all such favors are when thus served up ! It is possible 
that 



THE GOD MARY. ■ 345 

" The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
No better a musician than the wren." 

But the wren is as sweet as the nightingale when heard in a far- 
away land, and no nightingale of professional art can equal the 
melody of the home bird, heard on a foreign shore. 

So, also, these ministerial letters are full of refreshment. Why 
is it that ministers so seldom correspond ? There is a world of 
richness in the mutual unbosoming of their souls. How passion- 
ate for Christ are these outgushings ! How uplifting these aspira- 
tions and dedications ! How the world melts, and three thousand 
miles is a cipher to the burning pulsings of electric souls ! Write 
to your brother in Christ warmly, frankly, naively, wholly. The 
best letters are clerical. " Forty Years' Correspondence with Dr. 
Alexander " is the only American book of letters worthy to stand 
with Cowper's and Lamb's. 

There is not much to see in San Luis. Its sixty thousand peo- 
ple are as monotonous as six. The cathedral is an improvement 
on the one in Mexico, in putting its choir behind its altar. It gives 
breadth and effect to the height and arches. Other churches many 
it has, some costly, and heavily laden with gilded altars. Chief 
among these is the church dedicated to Mary at the end of the 
paseo, or calzarda, a broad tree-lined walk of over a mile. This 
church has only ascriptions to Mary on its walls. "Madre del 
Creador," " Madre de la Divina Gracia," " Madre del Salvador," 
"Madre del Jesu Cristo," and many others. Some of these are 
on the high road to blasphemy, if they have not reached it. The 
Mother of the Divine Grace, the Mother of the Creator, are two 
vast strides in that direction. They are like those on the cathe- 
dral of Leon, though these fall short of the suggestive divine as- 
sumptions that Leon ascribes to her nature and power. 

This city still maintains its bull-fights, and the amphitheatre is 
preserved, and used every Sunday night, except in Lent. The 
priest has to be busy then, said a good Mexican Christian, in ab- 
solving the bull-fighters. Near this favorite resort is the alameda,' 



346 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

dry and treeless, and far inferior in beauty to Queretaro. For so 
large a city its attractions are exceedingly small. 

But that which drew me hither was exceedingly great. Small it 
is in the estimation of the people, small probably in the opinion of 
the country at large, but it is by far the greatest thing in the city or 
the State. Let us go and look at this marvel of San Luis Potosi. 
You pass up the long and narrow street that goes out from the 
west side of the plaza, as I locate points of compass. It may be 
the other way, for all I know. You will see on the side of the 
house, on the corner of the plaza and this street, many scars, made 
by bullets and cannon-balls. They are reminiscences of the revo- 
lutions which are apt to rage fiercely in this city, and which always 
centre about the governor's palace^ on the plaza close to this cor- 
ner, at right angles to his house. The fight ran up and down this 
street, and around that corner. Go down the narrow lane a third 
of a mile, and you reach the first street crossing it. On the cor- 
ner of that street was another battle fought, another revolution won, 
and one that is not to be lost, though it may have to be fought over 
several times before it is completely achieved. The Christian's 
battle, like the freeman's, 

" Once begun, 
Descending long from sire to son, 
Though often lost, is surely won." 

In that corner building, a few weeks before I was there, a mob at- 
tempted to break up Christian worship. Senor Vivera, a live man 
he is, as his name signifies, has been preaching here for some time ; 
of late under the direction and with the co-operation of the Pres- 
byterians. That Sabbath there was an attempt made to mob him 
down. A gang, made drunk with pulqui, were pushed into the room 
by their confederates and leaders. His little daughter, only five 
years old, began to cry. He told her not to be afraid ; that the 
same God and Saviour would take care of him that took care of 
the prophets and apostles when mobbed ; that he did not fear their 
wrath. He appealed to them as to his conduct, for they had known 
him for many years. They filled the room, and insulted him. The 



A SUNDAY-SCHOOL BANNER. , 347 

police were sent for, and the mob left, but kept up a stoning of the 
windows. Three thousand were in the streets, full of threatenings 
and slaughter. He went through the midst of them to the govern- 
or's palace for protection, they hurling stones at him all the way. 
Afterward summoned to the court, he asked the brethren to pray 
for him, that he might be preserved from danger ; and prayer did 
ascend for him fervently. The prosecution, as he supposed, was 
caused by the priests, who charged him with abusing them. This 
he denied, and proved himself innocent. 

These riots have increased his congregation, many learning by 
them, for the first time, that any other church but the Eoman ex- 
isted in the city. 

He was holding his meeting a little farther down the same street, 
his lessor having risen on the rent till he was driven out. He has 
a pleasant casa, and Sabbath morning a roomful gathered to hear 
the Word. Rev. Mr. Thomson assisted in the service, and Senor 
Vivera read a written discourse and prayed. He is a small, well- 
knit, resolute man, full of faith and zeal, well known and respected 
in the city, as I found on visiting with him many of the places of 
business. 

He is fond yet of symbols, and has a flag in preparation for his 
Sunday-school that exhibits both his taste and the skill of these 
natives. It is of equal longitudinal sections of purple, white, and 
blue silk. A small cross oi lapis lazuli tipped with gold tops off 
the flag-staff. On the white or central section is placed a symbol 
of the sacraments — a conch -shell, significant of baptism, with a 
wreath of wheat in gold embroidery and a cluster of grapes for the 
Lord's Supper. A crimson cross is to be wrought on the purple 
silk, and twelve silver stars on the blue, for the twelve apostles. 
This is wrought exquisitely in silk and gold, and surpasses any 
Sunday-school flag I have ever seen. It illustrates, perhaps, the 
education of this people, and they may need to be taught the 
vanity of all symbols. But there is stuff in him, doctrinal and 
practical, and I think he will be more and more a power in this 
city. 



348 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



It needs him, 
for it is woefully 
given to idola- 
try. The image 
ofthe Virgin of the 
Ranchos, a league 
out of town, is vis- 
ited by the image 
of Joseph, just be- 
fore the rainy sea- 
son begins, and 
he escorts her to 
town, where she 
stays as his guest 
until the rain falls, 
when she is es- 
corted back again. 
This procession, it 
is said, causes the 
rain. It was world- 
ly -wise to select 
that time for the 
visit. But it has 
failed lately, per- 
haps because of 
the presence of 
the Protestants. 
There has been 
scarcely any rain 
here for two years, 
despite these vis- 
THE VIRGIN. its of the imagcs 

and their worshipers. This failure may open their eyes to the folly 

of this idolatry. 

We held English service at Mr. Thomson's house in the after- 




AN ENEMY'S PROPHECY. 



349 



noon, which many 
Mexicans attend- 
ed. He re-preach- 
ed the English ser- 
mon over to them 
in Spanish. It was 
an exceedingly im- 
pressive occasion. 
Here is the seed- 
germ of the new 
life that is to come 
to all this people. 
They are begin- 
ning to discern it. 
A priest said that 
very afternoon, at 
a funeral, that the 
Protestants would 
succeed, for they 
cultivated piety. 
May they cultivate 
it more and more, 
here and at home ! 
That is the true 
trait of the Chris- 
tian — cultivate pi- 
ety. These breth- 
ren and sisters 
seem to enjoy 
religion. I was 
charmed with their 
simplicity and Joseph. 

heartiness. One, a poor shoe-maker, was dressed in his white cot- 
ton pants and overshirt, his whole wardrobe for all days. He re- 
paired my boot, but would take no pay, nor could I force it upon 




350 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

him. He clung to me as a child to its parents. Others are faith- 
fully seeking the light. Students are spending hours in search- 
ing the Scriptures. The dawn is breaking. The Sun of Right- 
eousness appears. May His beams soon fall on all this darkened 
land ! 



A SENSE OF LONELINESS. ' 351 



VII. 

OUT AT SEA. 

Leaving Shore. — A hot Companion. — Parallel Mountains. — Parks and Divides. 
— Hacienda of Bocas. — Gingerbread Pigs. — A ragged Boy Apollo. — Marriage- 
less Motherhood. — The Widow's Reply. — Sierra Prieto. — Mortevillos. — Rev- 
eling in the Halls of Montezuma. — Strife of Beggars. — Dusty Reflections. — 
Venada. — Chalcos. — The Worship of the dying Wafer. 

To launch out from San Luis Potosi is like leaving the Irish 
shore for America, or Halifax for Europe. You feel that you have 
got fairly to sea. San Luis is the last of the group of central capi- 
tals, lying nearest the north, yet identified in its location and life 
with the cities lying not far below. Zacatecas, farther to the north, 
may claim like kindred, but not as close. The five towns of Que- 
retaro, Guanajuato, Leon, Guadilajara, and San Luis Potosi are a 
sort of central league. To push above the latter, especially on the 
road to Monterey, is like swinging out into another country. It is 
four days to Saltillo, with no town of importance intervening ; four 
days of reported peril from robbers and greater peril from the fears 
of robbers. If a sense of loneliness comes over one when he 
rounds Cape Clear and steers straight into the harsh Atlantic, even 
though he is facing, and moving toward, home, so may a like sense 
affect one as he turns his back on the real Mexico of population, 
history, and power, and moves northward and homeward from San 
Luis Potosi. Especially would this loneliness deepen if in his case 
he were a solitary traveler. It is like crossing the ocean with no 
fellow-passenger. That abyss is yet more abysmal. One is then 
apt to feel and to quote the dreary lines : 

" It is not grief that makes me moan ; 
It is that I am all alone." 



252 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Such might have been my feelings as I entered the coach at four 
this morning ; for although I found another passenger there, I was 
as far apart from him as Nimrod's leaders found themselves from 
each other, all of a sudden, on the plains of Shinar. And at the 
end of a single posta, we separated in body, as we had already been 
in tongue, and I was actually left in the Selkirk condition. I made 
a pillow of the coach side till morning, not letting solitude destroy 
slumber. The road was easy, and the sleep not much broken. At 
sunrise we change horses at a little cluster of huts, dignified with 
the stately Spanish name of La Estansuela. It is remarkable, this 
swell of names over nothing. The land is full of it in many other 
ways. 

Here we commenced climbing the slight ridge that limits on this 
side the beautiful valley of San Luis. All the ridges so far are 
slight, but all exist. The divides are of various breadths, from two 
to five miles, are barren, dry, stony, but with irrigation from the 
surrounding hills could be turned into blossoming gardens. The 
cactus grows wild over them, and the maguey, showing the capaci- 
ty of the soil, and its readiness to yield to suitable culture. 

The sun breaks in upon us with a fierce glare, like a lion on his 
prey. He says, evidently, " You want a companion ; I'll be a good 
deal more of one than you desire." There is anger in his eye. like 
the blistering risings of the heated term in the North. He is as 
good as his word. A hotter day I have not seen in Mexico or else- 
where. 

The mountains range on either side of the road from three to 
five leagues distant, and never approach it much nearer. You are 
sure they will shut you in ahead, they look so near ; but a sharper 
or a nearer view shows a gap perpetually opening, and through that 
gap you are constantly passing. It is indeed no gap, but the mere 
line of the uneven parallel. How far it may continue I have yet 
to learn. It has been with me so far ever since leaving Mexico, 
and especially uniform this side of Queretaro. In fact, it seems a 
trait of the land, the side journey of a hundred and fifty miles to 
Leon being a perpetual path between lofty ranges of hills, from ten 



A SITTER FOR EASTMAN. 353 

to twenty miles apart. These divides open into lower parks, cir- 
cular or oblong, of various sizes, some embracing a hundred square 
miles, some sixty, some forty, some ten. These parks are usual- 
ly cultivated, especially in their lower levels, where they can most 
easily command the needful irrigation. They are beautiful, as seen 
from the low ridge that incloses them on the north and south, and 
when under culture are beautiful on closest inspection. Otherwise 
their parched and wild condition mars their countenance, on a 
nearer view. 

The first divide north of the San Luis Valley on this road opens 
upon the hacienda of Bocas, or Mouths, as pretty a spot to the 
eye as one would wish to see. It is a bit of park, full of trees in 
full leaf, fields of wheat and barley intensely green, and contrasting 
wonderfully richly with the surrounding nakedness. The drawing 
up to this hacienda and halting do not improve its effect. The 
human aspect is not equal to the earthly. It is the more earthly. 
Boys and old women and men are busy at this early hour in beg- 
ging for their daily bread. I invested a cuartillia (three cents) in 
ginger-snaps, cut into the shape of pigs, a favorite form of that gin- 
gerbread here, for which three cents I received eighteen of the gin- 
gerbread pigs aforesaid. Having been treated so liberally, I felt 
inclined to treat others liberally, and so dispensed my swinish fa- 
vors to the boys and girls scattered around. 

One boy was especially attractive ; he wore his ragged zerape 
over his naked shoulders, a feat somebody was laughed at for say- 
ing Apollo did ; but this brown boy Apollo did it. It was in tatters 
and small at the start, but he wore it as a king. A like ragged gir- 
dle was worn in an equally stately manner. He had his kite ready 
for flying, and was as perfect a model of boy as ever sat to an Ital- 
ian artist. How Eastman, who painted the " Barefoot Boy," would 
have delighted to have this ragged, royal, three-fourths naked little 
scamp sit for his picture ! 'Twas easy to give him a ginger-snap 
pig. I hoped to see him some day not as romantically clad or sub- 
clad, in some Christian school, and possibly pulpit. Quien sabe? 

A hideous, homely dame was at the fountain, filling her pitcher. 



354 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

A girl of fifteen was on one side ; one of five on the other, I made 
friends with the mother by the gift of one of my pigs to the little 
one. I asked her about her husband. She had none. Was he 
dead? "No." Where was the father of these children? "In Mon- 
terey." How many children had she ? " These two only." The same 
father ? " Yes." That conversation revealed the Samaritan-woman 
condition of this people. Very few are married. It is said the 
fees of the priest are so high as to prevent it. He asks eight dol- 
lars a wedding. But as all marriages now are civil, and the price 
the State asks is not high, I think the charge against the clergy 
, does not explain the real cause of this social degeneracy. It is in 
the blood. There was no seeming sense of shame in her answers, 
no modesty, or lack of it. Far prettier and more affecting was the an- 
swer of an old beggar-woman, later in the day, to my inquiry, Where 
is your husband? She pointed to the ground, and said nothing. 

It was a strange feeling that I had as I sat thus by the well, and 
talked with this poor outcast woman, who is without any clear, con- 
vincing conscience, and has no hope except that Christ comes and 
talks with her and such as her through His ministers and Church. 
" Lift up your eyes," you can hear Him say, " and behold the field ; 
for it is white already to harvest. Pray ye therefore the Lord of 
the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into His harvest." 

This hacienda follows us for ten miles, skirting the mountains on 
the lower or eastern side, and looking rich exceedingly in orchards 
and fields. The road runs on the higher levels, burned to ashes 
with six months' rainlessness, but still growing the mesquite in 
large numbers, which give a pretty wild-wood, rural character to the 
road, as it winds in and out among the light-green feathery branches. 

The mountains come nearer the road on the w^est, mountains full 
of silver, the mozo of the coach says ; for I have climbed out of my 
lonely centre to the seat with the driver. The range is called the 
Sierra Prieto. At its base is a horrible cluster of huts, only four 
or five feet high in the ridge-pole, covered with thatch, and barba- 
rous almost to the Ottawa condition of debasement. It swings 
forth the stately title of Mortevillos, which, if it meant " Deadville," 



MONTEZUMA REVELING. 355 

would not be far from the truth. It is a painful answer to all this 
silver range, this terrible, debased humanity. It is a greater an- 
swer to the Church that professes to guide them. A cross over one 
or two of the huts shows the faith without works which so charac- 
terizes the most of the Roman Church in this and every country. 

The valley, whose southern edge this ragged rancho fringes, is 
broad and handsome, but not as seemingly well cultivated as the 
one preceding; perhaps because the one owner there keeps up a 
more perfect establishment than the many owners here. 

In its centre you see the white towers and domes of a church, 
and, driving to it, find yourself in the large and fresh- looking vil- 
lage of Montezuma. 

In my college days I had heard much of reveling in the halls of 
the Montezumas. It was the time of the Mexican war, and that was 
a favorite phrase of that conflict. I had had no good opportunity 
to indulge in such reveling heretofore. There is only one place 
where it could even pretend to be in the halls of that emperor — 
Chapultepec, and that was built long after he died ; and Lerdo 
gave no breakfast there while I was in Mexico, and had he done 
so I should not have been invited. But here comes, unexpectedly, 
the real article ; for breakfast is to be served up here, and we shall 
indeed revel in the halls of Montezuma, 

Do you wish to know in what the reveling consists ? Enter the 
large square court-yard of the Meson del Refugio (House of Ref- 
uge). A door on one of its sides opens into a clean, cool room; 
the white cover and clean plates look attractive. Our bread is hot 
tortillas. Truly Montezumaish, for he never saw French rolls, and, 
curiously enough, this is the first place I have not seen those rolls 
in all the journey, and only once before in all the country. The 
cakes are light, warm, and edible, more so than corn-meal fritters 
in the States. 

Next comes rice, also cooked better than in the States, cooked 
dry, and each kernel by itself, not mashed and moist. It is also 
spiced with cloves — the first time I ever saw it, and I hope not the 
last, for it greatly improved the dish. 



356 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The meat fell back from this high standard. Steaks, fried in fat 
and chilli ; goats' flesh, in a gravy of chilli, a hot, thick, tomato-col- 
ored gravy. To neither of these did I incline. But the frejollis, 
or beans, were good, and the tea and coffee excellent. So I rev- 
eled, quite Spartan-like, in the hall of Montezuma, and all for four 
reals, or fifty cents. As I took my seat at the table, beggars came 
and took their stand at the door-way, first an old man, then an old 
woman. Very decrepit, but very obstinate, was the old lady. She 
was going to march immediately on the enemy's works ; but the 
old man held her in. So she squatted at the door-way and talked 
with him, waiting my outgoing. She grabbed my legs with her 
skinny clutch. I surrendered, and gave her a cuartillia, on condi- 
tion she would give the old man half This she promised, but I 
fear failed to keep her word, for he came to me afterward and 
said she had not given him his share. He was not the first victim 
of misplaced confidence, especially of man in woman. How can 
beggars be charitable ? Perhaps, however, she gave him his share, 
and he pretended she had not in order to get a duplicate from me. 
Who can trust who here ? 

There is a fine stone monument in the plaza to Montezuma, and 
some of the buildings are pretty. The fields about are green, and 
in the cool of the day there are a good many worse places than 
Montezuma. 

I leave these beggars, who look old enough to be the very con- 
temporaries of the unfortunate ruler, and get inside the coach, hav- 
ing all the three seats to myself I stretch upon them all, and sleep 
as soundly as if on a bed, more soundly than on my too fully oc- 
cupied bed last night at the San Luis Hotel. As I rolled softly 
along, I felt the superiority of this sort of travel over the tossing 
and sea-sick steamer, and was adapting Saxe to the occasion : 

" Bless us, this is pleasant, 
Riding in the stage." 

Even when the dust and heat grew dense and potent, I found re- 
lief in that sublime line of Cowper, and changed this cloud into 
that grand vision : 



J 



THE ''■HOLY wafer:' ■ 357 

" For He whose cars the winds are, and the clouds 
The dust that waits upon His sultry march 
When sin hath moved Him, and His wrath is hot, 
Shall visit earth with mercy ; shall descend 
Propitious in His chariot paved with love ; 
And what His storms have blasted and defaced 
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair." 

May He descend in mercy soon upon this long-suffering people. 

The same parks and hills and divides accompany us into the 
next cultured hollow, which incloses the flourishing town of Ve- 
nada. Thence our last posta brings us to Chalcos, a mineral town 
of fifteen thousand inhabitants. Into its large square, centred with 
a fountain, we gallop, before five o'clock, and finish our first day at 
sea. How glad the sea-sick people on the Atlantic would be if 
they could get off, and get into unshaking beds every twelve hours. 
This gives even the stage a vast superiority over the ship. Twelve 
hours' run, twelve rest, carry us without great weariness forward to 
our port. 

This is a flourishing silver mining town of small size. Yet a 
million of dollars a year are taken out of its mines. Four hacien- 
das reduce the ore. The mines are owned by French gentlemen. 
Several pretty plazas adorn the town, which romantically lies on 
the slope of not steep hills. 

As I was walking through the street just at dark with a native 
who was showing me the place, I saw the people kneeling, and 
heard the bell toll. Asking my man the meaning, "El Viatico," 
he replies — the Holy Wafer borne to the dying bed. The priest 
came, with a black umbrella over his head ; boys with candles on 
either side, and a few persons walking with him. He held the wa- 
fer in his hand. Down went my guide upon his knees. After he 
had passed, I asked who it was that was dying. " Un grand hom- 
bre" (an old man). "Sick long?" "Only fifteen days." "Of 
what?" "Fever." So a poor soul is going to his account to-night 
in this town. How many elsewhere the wide earth over ! Our first 
day may be our last. "Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as 
ye think not the Son of Man cometh." This was the first sight of 



358 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

the procession of the Holy Wafer I had seen. It would not have 
been allowed in the larger cities. Nor could I have witnessed it 
without kneeling myself a few years ago, except at the cost of my 
life. 

The hot day has grown cool, a fresh breeze blows from the hills, 
and a good rest will prepare for our second day at sea. 



A DISAGREEABLE PLACE. 



359 



VIII. 

MID-OCEAN. 

The "Rolling Forties." — Ceral Hard-tack. — Not so Hard. — Mexican Birds. 
— Smoking-girls. — Laguna Seca. — La Punta. — First Breakfast in an Adobe. 
— Hacienda of Precita. — The Spanish Bayonet. — Mattejuala. — Birnam Wood 
marching on Dunsinane. — The first and last Mosquito of Mexico. — Yankee 
Singing. — Worse threatened. 

The point in a journey where you strike the dead neutral cen- 
tre between the coming and the going is almost always one of 
intense disagreeableness. Such the ocean wanderer finds the 
"rolling forties," in "the dead waste and middle of" that tire- 
some ferriage. I am in the like condition now. I doubt if many 
would take this trip could they see this room before they start; 
nor would many cross the ocean if they were treated to a foretaste 
of that ridge where the waves roll east and west, and the spirits 
sink like lead in the mighty waters. 

The room is in the Casa Diligencias Generales, in the town of Ce- 
ral, which contains three thousand human inhabitants. Of course, 
being the stage-house, it is the best in the place ; and it is the best 
room in the house; since I, being the only passenger, have my pick. 
Look at it. First look at that muddy water, a tumbler of which 
that dirty boy has just brought in. A Mississippi boatman could 
not taste it. It is worse than the Thames after Hood's " Bridge of 
Sighs " had spanned it. 

" Drink of it, lave in it then, if you can." 

It stands on a dressing-table that saw paint in spots a century ago, 
and has hardly seen soap since. Adjoining it is a like white-and- 
gray wash-stand, its legs inclining inward from the decrepitude of 

24 



360 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

age. In the centre is a round table, on which this is being written, 
that is not quite so venerable. The red of its varnish still largely 
covers it, but it makes up in dust for what it lacks in years. A 
single chair is present, alike venerable, too venerable to be in serv- 
ice, like a worn-out preacher not well supported with Conference 
gifts. One fears all the time that it will break down in its present 
occupancy, as one fears a like breakdown in a like superannuate if 
he is put to work belonging to his prime. A like dilapidated bed- 
stead stands in each of three of the corners of the room. All to- 
gether do not seem strong enough to uphold their probable pres- 
ent occupants, let alone two hundred pounds more. 

The floor is of cement, like a good cellar bottom, well covered 
with dust. The paper is torn off half up the walls, and is badly 
rent in the ceiling, which is of the same unsubstantial stuff, as is 
not unfrequently the case in this country. A door opening into 
another apartment has three of its six window-panes knocked out. 
Truly one might well sigh for some other lodge in this vast wilder- 
ness. 

Yet every cloud has its silver lining. The " rolling forties " at 
least roll well. What are the good points about this cuartiJ 
First, it is roomy — fifty feet at least long, and twenty wide. It will 
make a good chapel for us one of these days. Then it has a fine 
picture of the Virgin — of course it could hardly be of any body 
else here — a picture that an artist made, her sweet looks raised 
heavenward, a dove in one hand resting over her heart, an exqui- 
site bouquet in the other lifted to the skies. I should like to car- 
ry it off, both for its beauty and for its lack of fitness to these disa- 
greeable surroundings. Then it opens on a sunny court surround- 
ed with flower-pots, but not many flowers, though roses and gerani- 
ums give it a home-like look, and feeble agave varieties show that 
we are in the tropics, but getting out of them. Birds line the walls, 
singing merrily their vespers. The chico is the favorite in number, 
if not in melody. This is not so very small as its name signifies. 
Perhaps cage-life has made it greater in size as well as song. It 
is gray and white, not unlike our ground chip-bird, though larger 



CIGARETTING COMPANIONS. 361 

and prettier. The burrion is small, canary-like in size, dark-striped, 
with yellow streaked slightly in; Here is a blue canary, the first 
I ever saw — ca?iarid aziil the hostess calls it. It is as handsome 
as its yellow kindred, and, for a novelty, prettier. The cardinal bird 
concludes the circuit, radiant of plumage and crested with scar- 
let, a haughty representative of his name. So birds and flowers 
are some consolation, and may even incline us to apologize for the 
dust, for which the mistress is perhaps no more to blame than is 
Cincinnati for its coal grime, or Boston for its east winds, or New 
York for its mosquitoes. For the plains are dry, and the winds 
high. 

Another good point about this place is its situation. Seldom 
has a better or bigger town an equal location. The mountains 
come close to it on the west. Superb black sierras they look, after 
this sunset hour, superb golden purple just before. They are, how- 
ever, inwardly neither black nor golden, but full of silver. The one 
nearest, and that rises solitary and splendid out of a vast plain, is 
the Sierra Catorce, and it is said has yielded a million of dollars in 
two months. These mountains are offset by the plain which they 
limit close on this side, but lie low in the eastern horizon, being 
there thirty miles away. 

Last and best, this has the good point that it is nearer home 
than any previous casa. The mid-ocean is agreeable, if for no oth- 
er reason, because it is w/^-ocean. So in this feature of our dis- 
mal house we rejoice, and will rejoice. When the lad said we 
started away at three, I said "Good ;" if he said "at twelve,'' I 
should have said, "better;" if "now," "best." Let us while away 
the interregnum with recording the log of the day. It will make 
the night less tedious. 

We left the town of Chalcos at our usual hour of four, four of us 
this time, for a rarity, being in the coach. At six we concluded our 
sleep, and looked each other in the face. My fellow-travelers were 
two young ladies, of seventeen to twenty, and their little Cinderella, 
a maid of twelve. They were going to Mattejuala, three postas off. 
The youngest of the two smoked several cigarettes before the day 



362 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

had fairly begun. She was a bright, laughing girl, who was only 
following, as they say here, la costumbre de la pais (the custom of 
the country). How is it worse for girls than boys? Men and 
women drink together. They can as properly indulge in this vice. 
Not far from sunrise we pass the beautiful hacienda of Laguna 
Seca (Dry Lake). It relieves the uncultured dreariness of the 
landscape with its finish and fineness of luxuriant green. The gate 
towers of stone are prettily capped and pointed in colored mor- 
tars. Its large plaza is swept clean. A pretty little pond, faced, 
walled, and encircled with trees, increases its attractiveness, and 
even the huts of the laborers are made into cottages. A- dozen 
or more stand end to the street, neatly built and thatched. I was 
surprised at this, for it was the first attempt I had seen on any ha- 
cienda to make the home of the work-people attractive. It soon 
dies away j for only a few rods off is a cluster of as mean huts 
as any in the worst spots on the roadside. It would cost too much 
to fix all the homes of the people that way. These are specimens 
of what might be done and will yet be done ; for all these dens are 
to be yet pleasant and comfortable homes. 

Leaving this partly perfect spot, we soon get into the thick of the 
hills. The open pass which I had thought yesterday would ac- 
company us all the way gives out, or we turn away from it. The 
spurs of the hills hug us, and we wind around and around them for 
several leagues. The soil is parched, cleft, barren, save of the per- 
petual cactus and mesquite. We get at last away from these too- 
close embraces, pass some plowed fields, and large thickets of the 
mesquite, and change mules at the poor station of Solis, a mere 
rancho. The scenery broadens, and in a few leagues we scamper 
through the quite good-sized village of La Vega de Gaudalupe. 

A bit of a rancho of two or three huts, called La Punta, is our' 
next stopping-place. It is our breakfasting-place also. It is a 
new experience to enter an adobe hut for breakfast, but travel- 
ing is intended for new experiences. So hunger drives me to the 
white table-cloth, the clean earth floor, and the bill of fare. A 
brisk and pleasant lady serves the table, assisted by a not so brisk 



THE SPANISH BAYONET. v 363 

or pleasant, but much older, man. The tortillas are warm, and the 
roasted chicken is as good as I have tasted in the country, far 
better than most I have tried to eat. Milk is wanting ; they have 
not any. I protest and persevere until he brings me two tum- 
blers of delicious milk, for which he wants a real extra, but is 
content with his half-dollar at the last. I asked her if he was 
her father. " No," she replied, laughing ; " my husband. He is 
vias grande" {Tc\\}iZ\\ older). They had twelve children. He said 
he.went to church every Sunday with his wife and children to Mat- 
tejuala, twenty miles off, which I doubt. If any body wants good 
milk and good roast chicken at a rancho, let them call on Seiior 
and Senora Tebucio, at La Punta. 

The hills fall back from this point (probably called La Punta 
from that circumstance), and we descend gradually into a handsome 
plain, almost a circle, from six to ten miles wide. We skirt its 
eastern side, leaving all the plain to the vast fields of the hacienda 
of Precita. The hills close it in on every side, except a tiny open- 
ing on the north-east. This, as we come near, widens into a pass, 
called El Puerto del Terquaro (the Pass or Gate of Terquaro). 
This lets us down gradually, as by. terraces and slopes, into the 
handsome plain of Mattejuala. In this plain the palma, or Span- 
ish bayonet, as they call it in Colorado, assumes pre-eminence over 
all rivals, both for number and size. It had been coming into note 
more and more the last score of miles. Here it opens into forests, 
miles square. It assumes almost the majesty of oaks, and extends 
an ocean of verdure, refreshing to the eye, though not of especial 
value to any other sense. A score of miles along its quaint hedge- 
rows and deep green effects brings us to Mattejuala, the largest 
town between San Luis Potosi and Saltillo. Here our cigaretting 
girls disembark, and hie round a corner to the broad-leaved gate- 
way of a cool one-story house, where they probably still keep up 
their chattering and smoking. The town is large and lazy, not 
having life enough hardly on that lazy day to harness our mules, 
or even to see it done. They, however, have enough to fly away, 
and dive into the outer country of palms and mesquite like a 



364 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

mountain torrent. Idler fancies crept over them as soon as they 
got well out of the last adobe lane of the gray and glowing town, 
and tliey fell into a soberer pace. It was another stretch over the 
same wide, bayoneted plain, which looked as if myriads of soldiers 
in Lincoln green were standing firmly at their arms over the wide 
prairie, or as if Birnam Wood was getting ready to march on Dun- 
sinane. It was a superb army, and suggested the prettiest of uni- 
forms for a soldier's gala-day, if not for actual service. 

The level drive brought us, ere fall of night, to this dingy dwell- 
ing-place of Ceral. I stroll in its dull plaza," and buy poor or- 
anges and poorer bananas. The Hot Lands are leaving us. A 
mosquito buzzes about my ear, the first I had heard or seen in all 
the country. He seemed so lonely that it appeared a deed of 
charity to put him into the ghostly company, innumerable of his 
kindred, that the hand of man has slain. 

An imaginative metaphysician said once, in a sermon " On Com- 
pensation," "The little insect you crush between your thumb and 
finger sails away on silvery wings to a loftier Empyrean ;" and an 
irreverent listener commented, " Every time, then, you kill a mos- 
quito you sting an angel." This was not of so high a faith as the 
little girl, who soliloquized to a fly, held between her thumb and 
finger, " Itty fy, you want to see Dod ? You s'all see Dod ;" and 
a crunching of her finger and thumb, and grinding of the fly be- 
tween them, puts her promise, as far as she could do so, into effect. 
So far has this mosquito murder led us, and him, away from this 
dismal plaza. 

Vespers were being held in a little church, and a melodeon, 
with a boy player and girl singers, gave this usually formal service 
a home-familiarity that was so far agreeable. May this attainment 
lead to higher graces of social worship. 

The sun sinks behind the silver hills, changing them to amethyst 
and gold, and the dreary cell of Ceral is reluctantly re-entered. 
Dinner is as bad as the chambers ; bed and board alike disgust. 
The meats are cooked horribly, and are of horrid materials. I 
follow Meg Merrilies's advice, "Gape, sinner, and swallow," and 



ANTICIPATED HORRORS. 365 

make out to worry a few mouthfuls down. The administrador 
of the Diligencia Company, to whom I complain of such accom- 
modation and fare, replies, "Wait till you sleep in a rancho to- 
morrow night." So I anticipate worse horrors on the morrow. 
Shall I find them ? 



366 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



' IX. 
NEARING SHORE. 

Preparations against a Rancho. — A golden Set. — Bonaventura. — A Rancho : 
what is it? — Companions. — Aztec or Chinese? — Desolation. — Tropic Thorns 
and Flowers. — An Oasis. — Hacienda of Solado, and its unexpected Hospital- 
ities. — Freaks of the Spanish Bayonet. — Green velvet Mountains. — The true 
Protector. 

One day's sail from land is not thought much of by the sea- 
tossed traveler. The stage-tossed may feel equally comforted. 
Though the stage is to be my companion more days than the 
one, still this oceanic stretch in its voyaging will come to a pros- 
perous issue, God willing and working, to-morrow at the heat of the 
day, which is not noon, but three in the afternoon, in this burning 
sky. 

I was warned last night, at my dismal quarters at Ceral, that this 
night would be far more miserable. So I fortified myself with big 
gingerbread swine — their ginger-snaps hereabouts take no other 
shape — with a French roll, a Bologna sausage that has done duty 
heretofore as a pistol, its tinfoil covering making it look like a 
shining silvered barrel, and all the more terrible, as it peeped from 
my breast-pocket, to the non-appearing robbers. So fearful was I 
that this would protect me, that it was hidden away in my valise, 
and is now to be agreeably eaten. That is more than turning 
swords into pruning-hooks, even pistols into meat. For dulces I 
had oranges, bananas, and pea-nuts. But the pea-nuts are not 
baked, and the bananas are hard and horrid, so that I have to fall 
back on the oranges, and sour they are. 

The rancho food thus being provided for, the rest of its accom- 
paniments are easily accepted. On a big log, resting on a white 



BONAVENTURA. 367 

artificial mould thrown round a little pond of brackish water, I am 
looking at the setting sun and writing these rambling notes. 

The rancho " has a pleasant seat." All around it tower magnif- 
icent mountains not far away, from two to five miles. They com- 
pletely inclose it, except toward the south, where a green opening 
shows no end. Like the green sea, it lies on the horizon, only it 
is still, as that sea is not, arid is touched at its sides with the hills 
of blue. The western ridges, where the sun is just descending, are 
black already with the shadow of night, the eastern glow richly in 
his rays. In blessings over the sleeping scene, a high and solitary 
peak just across this pond lifts its white castellated front like a 
venerable, bearded priest, and therefore not a Romanist, who is 
beardless as well as crownless. Off in that southern green ocean 
is a green cone, as perfect as a rounded pyramid — a Teneriffe cov- 
ered with eternal spring. 

To the north the hills, more distant, shine the brightest in the 
vanishing hues, while the sky above and along the northern side, 
and far around to the eastward, is still aflame. The valley itself 
thus superbly inclosed is a sea of green, all its white, bare, barren, 
disagreeable features being lost in this dying hour of the day, as 
all the bare, barren, disagreeable features of a life so often fade 
and disappear in its setting. As we drove up here, weary with the 
hot and long and dusty ride, and saw this white embankment and 
the white adobe of the rancho shining in the sun, with a half dozen 
tall green willows standing guard over them, I was glad to welcome 
it as my home for the night, and to bless its name, Bonaventura 
(good coming), as prophetic of this advent. And now, as this love- 
ly flush overspreads all the heavens, like a bloom and a smile on 
the cheek of the dying beloved — I have seen such, have not you ? 
— I feel yet more like blessing the good angel that has brought me 
thus far happily over the burning and the brilliant, yet danger- 
ous land. How that rose deepens, and rims the north with fire ! 
Where did you, where could you ever see a grander setting? How 
vastly ahead of the tumultuous and fatal sea ! Ah ! you say, 
your land is tumultuous and fatal also. Those brown fellows, do 



368 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

they not weigh you in their balance for so much gold ? You are 
pistolless, and they know it. Perhaps they know too that you are 
a Methodist parson, and therefore their legitimate, nay, command- 
ed, prey. " When you say peace and safety, then sudden destruc- 
tion Cometh." Well, it may be so, and so may it be on shipboard ; 
but it may not also. They have treated me splendidly so far. I 
will believe and hope unto the end. 

The scarlet is becoming crimson, and its darker edges purple, 
the sure sign of approaching dissolution. 

The hundred horses that have just been up here drinking, and 
then out in the chaparral for a nip at the new grass, are wander- 
ing back to their corral, an inclosure of upstanding logs. We shall 
have to leave our log and outlook, the big willow standing in water 
just at my feet, the green landscape fast turning gray, and the sol- 
emn, affectionate, parental hills, not so solemn as that they are not 
happy-looking also, as all properly solemn persons are, and hie us 
to the inside of our rancho. 

You have heard much about ranchos. Let me describe this one. 
It is a very small pueblo, or a tiny corner town, like the larger 
towns, except there is in it no Casa Grande, no brick or mortar 
dwellings, only adobe. But our rancho, like a new Western town, 
aspires to a future, and is laid out with more care than most of such 
villages. It has a square, or plaza, on this small prairie, three sides 
already surrounded with the huts that may give way sometime to 
houses of grander make and material. But here the law of the 
larger houses prevails. As a log-cabin is a Fifth Avenue house in 
its germ, so a true rancho is a Spanish castle or Mexican casa 
grande in its beginning. First logs, then wood, then marble ; first 
mud, then mortar, then marble. This rancho is exactly after the 
type of Barron's and Escandron's great houses in Mexico ; a com- 
mon gate-way for horses, carriages, men, and dogs ; in this case, 
pigs are added, a luxury not allowed in the city. A door opens to 
rooms on either side of the gate-way, porter's there, owner's here ; 
then comes a large square court, with rooms opening into it. The 
rear side of this court is a stable, and another court behind the 



CHEAP LABOR. 369 

first admits you to the rest of the stables. The room where I write 
opens into the court on the left. After passing the porter's room 
into the court, turn to the left, first door ; enter. There I sit at a ta- 
ble, with a tallow-dip upon it. Three single cots are in the room, and 
all occupied to-night ; floor of hard earth, every thing comfortable. 
It is no worse, though less pretentious, than the hotel at Ceral. It 
is not so disagreeable. My fellow room-mates are a Mexican gen- 
tleman, and a German youth of nineteen, who left home to escape 
the draft, and is to make his residence in Durango. He took the 
precaution to arrange at Brownsville to become an American citi- 
zen at twenty-one. So Bismarck and Moltke have lost him for 
their battle of Dorking. The Germans do not like to " train " any 
more than the Americans or English ; " 'tis not their trade." They 
will have to abandon that purpose, and trust, as do their kin, to 
patriotism to defend what patriotism, more than military training, 
won. 

This bright boy is afflicted, as most boys and men are here, 
with a tendency toward Cognac, and yet complains of the very 
ailments Cognac pre-eminently induces. When will the good 
cause of total abstinence preserve youth and men from this dire 
curse ? 

Let us run over the log of the day. Out and off at four, in a 
magnificent starlight, as clear and lustrous as a Northern coldest 
winter's night, and as warm as a Northern summer's. It chills a 
little in the riding, and a bonfire of corn-stalks at the first posta is 
not disagreeable. A peon has kindled the fire, and stands over it 
in his white cotton trowsers and shirt, with his zerape round his 
shoulders, his feet bare save of sandals and thongs. He is on a 
walk from Mattejuala, to work on a road for three reals (thirty-sev- 
en and a half cents) a day. Think of that, ye who are giving Irish- 
men three dollars, and sending to China for substitutes. Here are 
millions of industrious and ingenious gentlemen — I use that word 
in both senses — whom you can get for a dollar, and they will think 
themselves wealthy. Let our Samsons find China at their doors. 

The apple and quince trees hang full of blossoms, in a garden 



370 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

attached -to this rancho, and other flowers and growing grains give 
proof that the air here, if chill, is never cold. 

A long, long posta of fourteen leagues (thiity-six miles) follows, 
over a wide plain, with scarce the sign of habitation. Five leagues 
out we meet a private coach and gentleman, the coach covered with 
cloth, a common usage here, to preserve it handsome for the city 
paseo ; for this coach contains a Congressman, who is on his way to 
the city, and the session. Not another sign of life, save in bush and 
tree, and not much in them, till the twelfth league is reached. Some 
horses grazing in the bushes look wistfully at us, envying, doubtless, 
their brothers in the coach, as boys, with all their liberty, envy the 
burdened man, harnessed and dragging his weary load up hill and 
down hill till he drops it, or drops under it, dead. A rag on two 
high bushes marks a house for an Indian family, and relieves the 
monotony of desolation. The sun has risen with a burning heat. 
Yesterday we shivered in a shawl till near noon ; to-day we swelt- 
er in the shade, and solicit and enjoy the breeze that blows through 
the coach, :albeit much dust gets mixed up with it. 

The vast prairies are thinly covered with shrubs of mesquite, 
and even the Spanish bayonet gives out, and dwindles to meagre 
proportions. A red-headed cactus, big-headed too, glows by the 
roadside, sharp, but not unlovely. This is the beginning of the 
chaparral region, whereof we heard so much in the days of Gener- 
al Taylor, and which Lowell so humorously sets forth in his " Bird 
of Freedom Sawin'." It is hard-looking stuff to march through, 
being short, and as sharp as a virago's temper. 

How is it that these tropic plants are so apt to be prickly .-* 
Almost every bush and tree you meet from here to Mexico is of 
this repellent type. Is it that heat in the blood of nature is like 
heat in the blood of human nature, and produces the noli-me-tan- 
gere state of the Scotch thistle and Scotch terrier? These palms, 
this mesquite, the cactus, all are thorny, cross, and " let me alone." 

" He talked about delishis froots, but then it was a wopper all, 
The holl ont's mud and prickly-pear, with here an' there a chapperal." 

Every reader of these pages has undoubtedly heard of oases in 



AN INQUIRY FOR BREAKFAST. 371 

the desert. You did not hear of much else in the way of figures, 
if your juvenile composition life was passed where mine was. It 
was a cheap and favorite illustration of sentimental youth, who 
called every " goody " their mothers sent them, every holiday their 
teachers gave them, every love-sick emotion a fair face bred in 
them, oases in the desert of their lives. 

Well, what they fancied I experienced in reality. I had tried 
every way to get over the long, lazy stretch of thirty-six hot and 
pulverized miles of dismal monotony. We drove past a line of 
wagons, four yoke of oxen to each, and the wagon itself, about two 
feet wide and six feet high, with palm -leaf matting sides and a 
peaked roof like a house, covered also with matting, the most curi- 
ous wagon in the country so far. The wheels were bigger than 
the house upon them, and the eight oxen seemed intended to drag 
the wheels. 

The wind blew the way we were going, and so we added their 
dust to our own, a proof that we do not always get out of other 
folks' dust by getting ahead of them. In fact, we not unfrequently 
get into it the more \ for they blow after you that which they can 
not leave after for you. 

After this weary eating of our own dust for so hot and long a spell, 
and even of that of those whom we had passed in the slow race, 
we came in sight of a stately hacienda. Its white walls glistened 
like a fortress. Its silver reduction chimneys towered, cannon-like, 
above its gates. Its broad, clean plaza, very broad and very clean, 
received us. The driver stopped in its centre, regardless of the 
hotel door, where he usually pulled up. I ask where breakfast is 
to be got. "Anywhere," he says, tossing his head quite indiffer- 
ently. I push round to a gate-way, and. ask a servant the same 
question. He points to a closed room. In it I see through the 
window a man writing. Not much sign of a breakfast there. I 
push my inquiries farther with like cold courtesy. At last, bewil- 
dered, I express my indignation at their neglect. A young man in 
a wide gray sombrero, pistol at side, white-appareled, says in good 
English, " You wish for a breakfast, sir ?" " Yes, sir," is the reply ; 



372 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

" I am glad to find one man who can speak a Christian language." 
"Go in there, sir, and I will meet you soon."' The servants are im- 
mediately and uncommonly attentive. I enter the court set forth 
with flowers and birds, peacock, clarine, and others of gay apparel, 
enter the cool dining-room, vacant, and take a seat at the first 
place, which happened to be the head of the table. Soon the 
courtly youth entered and sat down to eat. Three others did, and 
I found, instead of being at a hotel table, I was a guest of a gentle- 
man, and occupying his seat. " So foolish v»ras I and ignorant, I 
was as a beast before" him. I bethought myself of hfm who with 
shame had to take a lower seat. 

But the young gentleman did not object, and so the seat was 
kept. I found he was educated near Alexandria, could talk En- 
glish well, was full of interest in the railroad question, as every 
body seems to be here. This hacienda was his uncle's, whom I 
had met seven leagues back, on his way to Congress. It was a 
cattle-raising farm, had on it now about five thousand cattle and 
forty thousand sheep and goats. It contained thirty square leagues, 
over seventy square miles, had on it silver and gold mines, but lit- 
tle worked, though the English ex-consul of Mexico had lately or- 
ganized a company for their development. The thick silver spoons 
of the table were from the mine ; an eighth of an inch the spoon 
was across its edge. Had I not had the fear of the unjust fame of 
my once military commander before my eyes, I would have begged 
or bought one of those specimens of the product of this farm'. 

He said the grazing here was excellent most of the year ; dry 
now on the plains, but sweet in the mountains. The cattle were 
worth ten dollars a head at the hacienda. They kept three hun- 
dred men employed, and supported fifteen hundred to two thou- 
sand people. 

He gave me an excellent dinner, for which he refused any pay. 
He was pleased, he said, to see Americans, and to revive his En- 
glish. It revived very easily. I commend to all passers on this 
road the hospitalities of Senor Gabriel Bustamante, of the hacien- 
da of Solado. 



BEAUTY OF THE HILLS. 373 

The Spanish bayonet here comes to the front again, and puts 
on some of its queerest forms ; and nothing can look queerer. 
Here is one with two legs coming together in its spiked head, like 
a boy's picture of a scared man, with his hair erect. Another has 
a single trunk and two arms stuck out, and a bushy head between, 
another infantile drawing. Two are ogling each other, their 
crooked backs crowned by projecting barrels of spikes that look 
like grinning faces ; and here are two others, evidently back 
to back, frowning fiercely out of the same wrathful hair. A row 
of them, of every size, shape, and position of crookedness, looks 
like Falstaff' s army, with tremendous fierceness in their weak 
though plumed heads. One was so perfect a statue, that I could 
not believe it to be any thing but a man till after passing it, and 
hardly then. Their grotesqueness is inimitable. Hood's queer 
pictures, and Thackeray's and Nast's and Cruikshank's, are all 
surpassed by the common doings of this palma. It is the har- 
lequin of Nature, the clown and the court fool of her royal palace 
here. 

The hills seemed to grow greener, and the fields also, perhaps 
because of the refreshment body and spirit had received, perhaps be- 
cause I had learned that it was their intention to do so soon. Still 
they did increase in verdure. The hills especially began to put on 
velvet. It became them well, but no better than their previous 
nakedness. They were sculptured so admirably, that one feels as if 
they were statues, and needed no wardrobe. 

" The sinful painter drapes his goddess warm, 
Because she still is naked, being dressed ; 
The god-like sculptor will not so deform 

Beauty, which limbs and flesh enough invest." 

But that western side, so daintily robed in soft, short green, does 
not look any the worse for the apparel. Indeed it is an improve- 
ment, for it fills up the rough clefts and rounds out the contour to 
a perfect symmetry. You never saw and never will see out of Mex- 
ico such foldings of rock, draperies tight-fitting yet flowing, cavities 
that are dimples, and swellings that are the rounding out of youth- 



374 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

ful cheeks and forms. It did not seem possible that rocks could 
be so lady-like ; soft, yet firm ; 

• " So moving delicate, so full of life." 

I gazed, and envied the coming circuit-riding brethren over this ha- 
cienda. We pass one of its ranches, clean and comfortable com- 
pared with many below, the men gentlemanly and the women lady- 
like. They came and shook hands with the driver ; a chatty moth- 
er offering him cold water, and all showing the American training 
of the young haciendado, and preparing the way for the chapel 
and the stationed preacher. 

This posta of twelve long leagues is pulled across through heavy, 
dusty, level roads, but also through this munificent landscape of 
green and silver, and we come where we began, and where, at near 
the midnight hour, this writing is being finished, in the peaceful 
rancho of Bonaventura. 

One more day and we see the city that concludes this ocean sec- 
tion, and we get to the end, practically, of Mexico. May the rob- 
bers keep still aloof, though my German lad sleeping over there 
says they are plenty and bad above, and tells a story of what they 
lately did, to put me in bodily fear, shooting a woman, and tying 
two men to a tree. He is armed, and thinks that is his protection. 
Shall I get out my tin-foil sausage, or beg a revolver.? Nay. I 
sing my talisman : 

"Jesus protects, my fears begone ! 

What can the Rock of Ages move.-' 
Safe in His arms I lay me down, 
His everlasting arms of love !" 



OFF BEFORE DAY-BREAK. ^^^ 



X. 

INTO PORT. 

Sunrise. — Villa de Gomez Firias. — A lost American found.^Flowering Palms. 
— An unpleasant Reminder. — A charming Park. — Agua Nueva. — La Encan- 
tada. — La Angostura. — Battlemented Mountains. — Buena Vista. — The Battle- 
field. — The Result. — Why. — Saltillo. — Alameda. — Friends. 

The four days' trip across the wilderness ocean is completed. 
The pleasant harbor is made ; the perils by land are at an end. 
True, four days' staging yet remain, or ere the country is left, and 
the robbers, if such there be. And as a -vessel has been wrecked 
in sight of its port, and coaches have been robbed within two miles 
of Mexico, there are plenty of chances yet to experience all that is 
threatened and feared. But the chief perils are past, and the chief 
weariness ; and it is to be hoped none that follow will exceed those 
that have gone before. Our night in a rancho was without excite- 
ment. " I laid me down in peace and slept. I awaked, for Thou 
sustained me." 

Jt was not much after midnight when the men sleeping on the 
ground at the door of our biggin began to bestir themselves ; at a 
little after one we were all up, and at two off, one party of two for 
the South, one of one for the North. The coach had several rent 
windows, and let in the cold air full freely. But as the air was not 
very cold, the shawl sufficed for a protector, and I tossed and slept 
till morning broke. The same level was before me, shut in by the 
same hills. The light grew rosy in midheavens, then on the west- 
ern ridge, and then the blaze boiled and steamed up the east, and 
all was done. 

It was a long pull through the unchanging fields of stunted mes- 
quite and palm, varied by equally stunted castor-oil bean, whose 

25 



376 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

very leaves and tiny yellow flower had a slimy and sickly look. 
At last a miserable cluster of huts appeared, thirty-five miles from 
our starting-place, and we stopped at the rancho with the ornate ti- 
tle of Villa de Gomez Firias. This was once a favorite resort of 
the Indians for its water, which is bad enough, and shows how the 
region round about must suffer. It was a favorite fighting -place 
also, and there were skulls and bones enough to furnish a half-doz- 
en secret college societies, not only with their hideous symbols, but 
with a secret greater than any of the boyish ones they profess to 
possess, even that which these embody and express — the mystery 
of death. 

An attempt was made to get up a breakfast here, but it resulted 
in a fried ^gg and frejollis, all the intermediate meats being absent. 
Nice fresh milk made the place of the absent and the present more 
than good. 

A colored boy, lounging at the half-cent grocery, had wandered 
hither from Texas. He had got on the Mexican white trowsers, 
sandals, hat, and language, but his pink shirt and black face he 
had not changed. He is working here for "two bits" a day, liv- 
ing in a rancho with his master. He said he preferred the dol- 
lar a day in Texas, but why he does not go and get it he says not. 
His name is William Henry Griffin. It was a pleasant sight and 
sound, this American skin and tongue, even as a variety to the 
universal brown. He was brought up a Methodist, and I hope 
may yet help these poor people into that liberty, though I fear he 
is not a shining example to-day of its achievements, whether of 
faith or works. 

Our wide prairie, extending from Mattejuala, here comes to an 
end. Hills gather around us, and grant no opening ; they must 
be crossed. The level has been not less than fifty leagues, or one 
hundred and thirty miles. The hills before us are not high, but 
they are sufficient to conclude that feature of the itinerary. We 
ascend a hard, handsome road, and wind into a round valley a 
thousand or two feet across, and shut in by hills. It is well filled 
with palm-trees that in this high mountain wall are getting ahead 



HISTORIC GROUND. 377 

of their prairie kindred outside. They are crowned with white 
blossoms. It is one of the strange contraries of this country in 
nature, as in men, that such hideous-looking creatures as cactuses 
and palms produce such marvelous flowers and delightful fruit. 
This palm bears this tree of white blossoms on the very top of its 
head ; out of the middle of these green spires, like bayonets, rise 
the tall white plumes, some of them two feet high, and half as tall 
as the trunk that supports them. Here, too, these trees are uni- 
formly straight, as if, like country people, they are simple and stur- 
dy when at home, but, brought into city society, grow odd and shod- 
dy. Another slope lets us into another park, longer and wider, but 
not long nor wide. The driver kindly points to a hole in the side 
of the hill, goes through the motion of cutting his throat, and says 
that here the coach was once stopped, three men taken out and 
robbed, and their throats cut, and they thrown into that hole. 

This is a comforting word. I ask him if there are any rob- 
bers here now. " Oh no ; farther on," is his still comforting reply. 
" Farther on " I saw three men descending a long slope. The hill 
looked near^ and yet I could not tell whether the men were on foot 
or on horseback. They drew near, and I saw their horses. "These 
are the men," I said. Stage stops. They part, and pass on each 
side of the coach. I am up with the driver. I wait to hear the 
cry to Zaccheus, " Come down !" They chat with the driver, laugh, 
and drive on. So goes that fear, like all its fellows. Compadres 
of the driver, they could not pass without saluting him. 

Another harder pull yet, and a more beautiful wild orchard of 
blossoming palms, and we enter a valley of great beauty, with 
mighty mountains guarding its eastern side and entrance. These 
are the loftiest peaks that have appeared on the road since leaving 
the green hills of Mexico. They rise close to the pass, and leave 
only a narrow path into the valley. They appear as if placed here 
on purpose to protect the land from invaders, and to that purpose 
they were put. For we are now close upon the historic ground of 
Buena Vista. These southern gates are the rear-guard of the land. 
The real battle was fought some miles to the front, across this val- 



378 • OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

ley, and amidst the ravine which opens out of it at almost right an- 
gles. But, undoubtedh^, this wall was chosen because of its partial 
protection and defense, and, had the front been maintained, this 
would have afforded a strong barrier. 

The hacienda of Agua Nueva is located at the upper end of this 
long valley of La Encantada. It is on a dry and rolling rise of 
ground, well under the tall hills. Here we change our mules, and 
start on the last posta across this wide sea, whereon we have been 
cruising these last four days. This is the most exciting of all ; for 
it passes over from end to end the track of that famous battle 
which more than all others conquered Mexico, as the people of the 
United States believed, and showed their faith by their works in 
making its victor President. 

The mule-changing Agua Nueva is as hot a spot as one cares to 
pause on. Yet some decaying buildings, one of which is especial- 
ly roomy, give us momentary shelter from the storm of heat, as 
well as the sight of dirty damsels frying their perpetual tortillas. 
A bit of a chapel, dirty as any of its worshipers, stood among the 
huts and the larger semi-ruins of a once valuable hacienda. It 
was, therefore, especially agreeable to see the mozo harnessing up 
his eight mules for the pull across a famous field, and to a civil- 
ized town. It was like that last day out at sea, when the hills of 
Neversink are almost in view, and you know that to-morrow morn- 
ing will see you safe in the dear old port. 

The mules whiz out of the dusty and decaying plaza, and rush 
for the gorge that opens straight on to the Gulf. The sweet valley 
of Encantada, running in the opposite direction, looks fruitful and 
green as we glance down it, just before the high rocky walls close 
us in and close it out, perhaps forever, to these eyes. 

These walls are like those at the entrance behind, except that 
the latter run east and west, and these run north and south. The 
last is the more usual lay of the hill lands. So that the valley of 
Buena Vista is simply in the same direction as almost every valley 
we have passed through since leaving the capital. But the previ- 
ous valleys have been from five to twenty miles wide ; this is hard- 



HISTORIC GROUND. 37Q 

ly two. It is well named La Angostura (The Narrows). Its rock 
forms are very remarkable, especially those on the left, or toward 
the west. They rise in huge castellated shapes, not unlike the ba- 
saltic columns near Velasquo. The range is five hundred to a 
thousand feet high, and full of surprises in its angles no less than 
its striated surface. The opposite side is higher, and more after 
the usual form of mountains. 

Between these ranges is a deep dry river-bed that has cut its 
crooked way through the valley, and scooped out a path twenty 
feet below the original level, and present roadway of the valley. 
This barranca chico, as they would call it, or little ravine, is not an 
unusual sight in the country. The hill-sides west of the capital 
exhibit some of great depth. But this one differs from any I had 
previously seen in that it is exclusively and evidently a river-bed, 
and probably is a river itself in the rainy season. 

On the eastern side of the narrow valley there are several mo- 
raines, as seemingly artificial as is the river barranca. If the one 
is scooped out by violent action of the elements, the other is heap- 
ed up by like violent action. They are as high as the bed of the 
river is deep. They extend from near the river's edge to the side 
of the tall rock -hills. How they were cast up is not evident. 
There are no glaciers to make them, as in the Alpine moraine. 
They can not have been tossed up from the bed of the river, for 
they have no connection with the stream. Riding past them, I 
could not solve their cause. Perhaps some scholarly soldier, who 
fought on them and under them, may be acquainted with their 
origin. 

They had a use that day.- On their summits were placed the 
American cannon, which did no little to carry the field. Perhaps 
it was on one of them that the famous order was given, "A little 
more grape. Captain Bragg," an order which strengthened the 
American heart, and so helped gain the day. 

The battle was fought on this strange field. Along that dry 
gulf General Taylor's troops made their perilous pause ; on these 
seemingly manufactured hill-tops they planted their guns. There 



380 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

was never a better Thermopylae than this ; only it was the invad- 
ing troops that took possession of it and held it. Santa Anna 
made the attack. Had the Persians held Thermopylae, would the 
Spartans have forced them ? I fear not. 

Yet the Mexicans ought to have forced these gates. They could 
not have been flanked ; they should not have been routed. But 
they were wearied with a long march, and the Americans held the 
position. Pluck and prowess, and, above all, Providence, overthrew 
them. " Providence," for God was in this war more than most 
Northern Americans dreamed, and very differently from what 
Southern Americans dreamed. It was not to give slavery a 
stronger hold or to hasten its destruction that our war occurred 
with Mexico. It was to. open that country to the Bible and the 
true Church. It was to Christianize Mexico, not to free or enslave 
our land, that this war arose. Its fruit, planted then, has been grow- 
ing since, daily and hourly, and will grow until this land is free 
from the curse that has so long and so grievously rested upon it.* 

* General Lew. "Wallace, in a late letter to a reunion of the Mexican veterans, 
thus describes a late visit to the field of Buena Vista : "I have ridden over the 
old field three times in the seven years last past, and always with the same 
feeling of wonder at the audacity of the chief who, with his four thousand five 
hundred, abided there the shock of the Mexican Napoleon's twenty-two thou- 
sand, and of admiration at the pluck and endurance of the few who, turned and 
broken, crushed on the right and left, and, by every rule of scientific battle, whip- 
ped oftener than there were hours of the day, knew it not, but rallied and fought 
on, the infantry now covering the artillery, the artillery now defending the infan- 
try, the cavalry overwhelmed by legions of lancers, and union of effort nowhere 
— fought on, and at last wrung victory from the hands of assured defeat. 

" The field is but little changed. The road to La Angostura is still the thor- 
oughfare across it ; winding along the foot of the hills on its left, and looking 
down into the fissures and yawning gaps which made the valley to the right so 
impassable even to skirmishers. I stopped where the famous battery -was plant- 
ed across the road, literally our last hope, and tried to recall the feeling of the 
moment. On the left all was lost ; Clay, M'Kee, Hardin, and Yell were dead : 
where all were brave, but one regiment was standing fast — the only one which 
through all the weary hours of the changing struggle had not turned its face 
from the enemy — I mean the Third Lidiana. Against the battery so supported, 







iiiiil mill I / II 



ANOTHER'S VISIT TO THE FIELD. 383 

This victory gave General Taylor the command of the whole 
country we have been traversing the last four days. In fact, it 
gave him control up to the capital. Had it not been for political 
fears lest his great success, especially if he added to it the capture 
of the city, would insure him the Presidency, he would have un- 
doubtedly been ordered to advance. As it was, his troops were 
taken from him, and transferred to General Scott. Among them 
was a youth who was lowest on the roster. Lieutenant Grant. Gen- 
eral Taylor was left idle, while a new fighting to the same city 
level had to be bloodily carried up Cerro Gordo and like terrible 
heights, simply to divide the honors between two generals of the 
same party, and so prevent the Presidential success of either. The 
Government squandered millions of dollars and many lives for pure- 
ly political reasons. Mexico was actually conquered at the battle 
of Buena Vista. Had it been vigorously followed, a month would 
have seen Zachary Taylor at Chapultepec. 

along the narrow pass, surged a chosen column of Mexicans. History tells how 
they were rolled back. In all the annals of war nothing more gallant on both 
sides, scarcely any thing more bloody and terrible. From the position of the 
Third Indiana at that moment, away over the plateau, quite to the mountain, 
reaches a breastwork not there when our comrades fought, but signalizing an in- 
cident in the war of the Mexicans against the French. 

" The last time I was on the sacred ground, I saw a ' greaser ' working with a 
hoe on the side of a hill by which we identify the position of the Third Indiana 
at the turning - point of the battle. My curiosity was excited. I rode to see 
what he could be doing. A moment ago I said the field was unchanged. I was 
mistaken. , The man was conducting a little stream of water from the mountain 
miles away to irrigate a wheat-field below, in the mouth of the very ravine down 
which the regiments of Hardin, Yell, and M'Kee had retreated, seeking the cov- 
er of Washington's battery — the very ravine where the blood was thickest on 
the rocks at the end of the fight. I looked down upon the velvet green of the 
growing stalks, darker from the precious enrichment the soil had that day re- 
ceived, and then at the stream of water which came creeping after the man, like 
a living plaything. I looked at them, and understanding the moral of the inci- 
dent, thanked God for the law that makes war impossible as a lasting condition, 
however it inspires the loves and memories of comradeship, and teaches that 
each succeeding generation of freemen are as brave as their ancestors." 



384 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The hacienda from which this battle takes its name is north of 
the field, and some two or three miles away. It is a pretty, peace- 
ful spot, its pinkish-white houses girting its plaza showing that it is 
well kept up. The fields about it are green with produce for the 
city of Saltillo, which is six miles still farther northward. A pul- 
verized road, broad and usually level, with only slight rises, winds 
its way through the valley, which widens here to the usual park-like 
width, five to eight miles. There is no sight of Saltillo. Looking 
for it, and hastening after it, as I have been doing now this many 
days, the end, feelingly, of the long and hazardous journey (for no 
fears affect one beyond this city), still it hides itself from the eye. 
Where can it be? The mountains throw themselves out before us 
as a vast amphitheatre, whose diameter traverses a score of miles. 
But where can the city be? At our feet? We drive along the 
same dusty and level plain, and suddenly look down, and lo ! Sal- 
tillo. 

There is a lower level out of which that circle of the mountains 
swings, a hundred feet at least below the Buena Vista plain. At 
its upper or southern edge, which is as marked as if cut like a 
cheese against the higher plateau, crowds this Northern town. A 
glimpse of it, and the diligence plunges down a very rough and 
noisy hill, leaps past open houses, whose brown occupants hasten 
to the doors to see the infrequent and much-welcomed coach, and 
with whirl and dash and snap of whip flings itself around corners, 
through courts, and comes up, with its crunch, at the hotel door. 

The town is enjoying its siesta ; our noise awakens it. It 
drowsily peeps from veranda and hut upon our disturbing mules 
and coach, and then folds its hands to sleep. It is the hottest 
hour of the day, three in the afternoon. How presumptuous for 
the coachman to rush in upon it so early ! He would not have 
done it but for the promise of an extra peso if he made an extra 
, hour; for I could thereby "do" the town before dark. 

It was done, and the cool arcade of a pretty hotel welcomed me. 
Bath and clean linen, the first I had dared to assume since leaving 
San Luis Potosi, put me in good outward condition, and so, in a 



A STRANGE MARRIAGE EXPERIENCE. 385 

degree, good inward also. A big room opened on a broad shaded 
patio. Singing birds and birds of rich plumage made it all the 
more home-like. It seemed more beautiful, perhaps, than it was ; 
for the contrast with ranchos and horrid Ceral and dirty Chalcos 
and wild half-desert living was as sudden as if it had been a new- 
revelation from Heaven. 

Especially was it nearer home. One could almost fancy that he 
was . home ; for only one day separated him from Monterey, and 
that was the next town to Matamoras, and that adjoined the United 
States. It was so near, it seemed as if the dome of Washington 
must appear over that farther rise of inclosing mountains. But it 
took long and wearisome days to bring that dome into view. 

The clean skin and clean shirt being secured, the town is sub- 
jected to inspection. It is soon done. A half-dozen streets run 
east and west along the upper edge of the plain ; a dozen or two, 
narrow and dirty, cross them. One-story white and tinted adobe 
dwellings line these streets. There are no sidewalks. The plaza 
is without ornament. The cathedral is cheap and frowzy. Every 
thing is asleep. 

There is one beauty — the alameda. This lies at the foot of the 
street, toward the west ; it is the prettiest I had seen in all the 
country. It is lined all around with a hedge of rose-bushes, then 
in bloom, perhaps always so ; its paths are richly shaded. It lies 
close to the base of high hills, and a river babbles along its edge, 
which invades its own borders, with its minor streams of irrigation. 
Outside, the brook gets up a sort of independent alameda, in an 
open pasture, where it gallops among apple and olive trees at its 
own wild will. 

I find in this city two gentlemen of my own language. One, then 
far gone in consumption, has since passed away. He had a strange 
marriage experience. He had remained unmarried till he had 
reached the ripe age of thirty-five or forty. His master left him in 
charge, and went to Europe. A rancho beauty came to town, kill- 
ing lovely. This sober, sturdy, and mature New Englander fell 
desperately in love with this wild slip of the pueblos. He married 



386 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

her. She appropriated all the diamonds, silver, and whatever else 
she could beguile her becrazed husband into bestowing. She final- 
ly left with a French gentleman. She was captured, brought back, 
and cast into jail. Getting released, she went as far as Indiana, 
got a divorce in that State, and married the lawyer who obtained 
it. Never a word against the wayward wife fell from the sick man's 
lips. He loved her still. Many waters could not quench, nor 
floods drown this flame of, in him, purest and most unselfish affec- 
tion. She had killed him, but he died without saying a word 
against the rancho beauty that had captured him whole. We read 
of broken hearts, and usually they are supposed to be of the femi- 
nine gender. Here was one of the opposite sort — a sober, sad, 
modest gentleman, worn to the grave by love and sorrow. 

Another gentleman invited the sick friend and myself to dinner. 
He was an Irishman, but had lived from a child with Jerry Warri- 
ner, the famous caterer in Springfield, Massachusetts, thirty years 
ago. He came out here, and amassed a competence, if not a for- 
tune. His children are all about him, and he is rejoicing in a 
green old age. It was a delightful evening that I spent in his 
cheery parlors, among his pleasant family and over his table, that 
had flavors in its dishes of the old tavern in Springfield. 

The change from the wilderness wanderings was more marked by 
these additions. It was not only reaching land, but home. May 
every like traverser of that dreary track find like refreshment at 
these hospitable quarters. 



A NOTICEABLE C FIANCE. 387 



XI. 

MONTEREY. 

Songs, in the Night. — Open Fields near Saltillo. — Effect of Irrigation. — 
"The rosy-fingered Dawn." — Gathering together of the Mountains. — San 
Gregario. — A Thousand -feet Fall. — Rinconada. — Wonders of Flowers. — 
A Hole through a Mountain. — The Saddle Mountain. — The Mitre. — Santa 
Caterina. — A Tin God. — A familiar Color. — St. Peter. — No Bathing after 
Midday. — The Smallness of Mexican Heads. — Miss Rankin's Work. — Strife 
between Brethren. — Its Benefits. — The two Dogs. — The Eye of the Town. — 
Revolutions. 

Though near the midnight hour, the birds in the court are sing- 
ing as gayly as at dawn. Hear that clarine ! deep and long and 
swelling and falling are its notes, with a true operatic touch. How 
that madcap mocking-bird is caroling ! They are making a night 
of it, truly. The day is too hot for their work, as it is for that of 
men. But, unlike their bigger and featherless biped kindred, they 
give songs in the night. Only that watchman's whistle replies to 
their softer and richer note, and a hallooing somebody, who bellows 
as if mad or afraid, or both. What is his office ? To call a revo- 
lution ? The air is full of that cry. 

The roomy court of this hotel is unusually luxuriant. The ar- 
cade inclosing it is spacious ; flowers, as fragrant as the birds are 
brilliant, fill the air with odors. Every thing is for coolness and 
rest. Rest with the pen is a goodly rest : let us take it. 

It was at day-break this morning that the coach rattled out of 
Saltillo with two sleepy passengers, a German and myself. The 
face of the country in that warm gray dawn looked changed from 
all behind it. America had touched it with her wand. The huge, 
high walls of the haciendas gave way to no fences at all. The 
land lay utterly open. Not the least impediment to your going 



^88 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

everywhere, except such as the irrigating water afforded. It was 
well watered and very green, running up under the lee of the dark 
mountains, and spreading out in long levels of fertility. Where 
this water had not come, the soil lay white and dead, a corpse-like 
look. Where it came, it was overflowing with life. 

The plains are about six miles across and ten miles in length, 
in sight of the white city at their south-western terminus. 

A single rosy ray streamed up from behind the easternmost 
mountain like a finger, an index of the coming sun. Homer's fig- 
ure, which Milton appropriates, as he does so much of Homer, 

"The rosy-fingered dawn appears," 

was suggested to my mind by this unusual spectacle. Anon a sec- 
ond broad ray joined its fellow, two fingers uplifted by the coming 
sun. The rose soon changed to yellow, shone through the open- 
ings of the hills, and sent its lustre across the lovely plain and 
upon the high and gracefully moulded mountains that shut that in. 
The richer line of Tennyson expressed the glory that followed : 

" The rosy thrones of dawn." 

I looked and was glad, for I bethought me, that coming light has 
already risen on my own land. It is not two hundred miles to the 
border. This rose and gold must have just illumined that fair 
clime. I prayed the prayer of Alexander Smith for this magnifi- 
cent land : 

" Come forth, O Light, from out the breaking East, 
And with thy splendor pierce the heathen dark, 
And morning make on continent and isle, 
That Thou may'st reap the harvest of Thy tears. 
Oh holy One that hung upon the tree !" 

The road is hard and smooth. Crosses appear quite frequently, 
and remind us of that long disease of the land, the violent death 
of its people, while dead mules and asses alike remind us of the 
late disease of its horses and their kin. 

The mountains gather close to us. The open meadows disap- 



A DOWNWARD PLUNGE. 389 

pear, and the pass assumes its proper place and shape. Three 
miles these bases stand apart, perhaps more, perhaps less ; - for 
distances are deceptive in this clear air. The walls rise a thou- 
sand feet and over, and, being so close to us, they seem five times 
that height. They are black and herbless in the upper portions, 
but of soft outline that makes verdure no necessity. So we canter 
slowly, comforting our still sick mules, to the first posta, San Gre- 
gario. Leaving here, we begin to descend rapidly. Soon a point 
is touched from which you gaze downward at least a thousand feet, 
and into which bottom you could easily roll — all but the easily — 
by just stepping to the side of the road and putting yourself into 
motion at the head of the gulf. Passengers usually walk, going 
up or down this plunge. Our light load lets us ride. The mount- 
ains roll up on either side in mighty convolutions, capping their 
folds with striated columns, now parallel, now perpendicular. They 
are not altogether lava -like here, but their black robe begins to 
glow with green. The heat and some moisture of the hills bring 
out this life. 

Down we fly into this defile, which grows more grand with every 
descent, until we reach the bottom of this plunge, and lift our de- 
lighted eyes upon the walls inclosing us. Getting between the 
banks of Niagara, if the bed were dry, would not be a dull sensa- 
tion. How much more this gorge, five times at least the height of 
that ravine, fashioned into artistic shapes, trimmed with gay appar- 
el, and crowned with level strata of piled-up limestone, mother of 
marble. 

This long slide — Yankee boys would call it " coast " — comes to 
a halt at the hacienda of Rinconada, or Cornertown, an angle made 
by the mountains, which is level enough to bear culture. It is " a 
sweet, pretty" spot of fifty 2iCX&s,poco mas y menos, with tall alamo- 
trees, not unlike a linden, shading its innermost and watermost 
corner from the intense glare pouring into this horn from that 
tropical sun. The breeze blows brisk, and tempers the growing 
heat with its warm March blasts. 

A slight rise for two leagues gives us an opportunity to admire, 



390 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

and, in a few instances, to pluck, the brilliant flowers that line our 
path. Not much chance for the latter is afforded. Once too 
much, I found, was my getting out of the coach a third time, to 
gather, if possible, the root of a superb crimson cactus. The 
driver touched up his horses as I touched the ground, and seemed 
purposed to push on without me, although the ascent was then 
quite marked. But it is a law of these diligences never to stop for 
any thing, a law I respect, and have no desire to see abrogated or 
weakened. Yet these gorgeous blossoms were a temptation. Es- 
pecially so were two cactuses, one a round ball, with bits of red 
flowers, and one a group of small and hidden balls, supporting 
each a large crimson cup. How can these terribly sharp "balls and 
tubes, so full of spines, burst forth into colors so delicate and deep ? 
For a flower is a fruit of these inner natures. Cut these bulbs, and 
you find them full of soft, firm, fine fibre, as of lace meshed in 
cream. They show that the soul of them is sweet. So some 
rough and thorny exteriors that are human, hide tenderest and 
grandest spirits. So, especially, does the thorny and self-deny- 
ing life of faith and patience and sorrow burst forth into the blos- 
soming of heaven. Other flowers abound of less grand style and 
color : a daisy of the tint of cream ; another of yellow, streaked 
with brown ; white daisies, larger and softer than our Northern 
skies produce ; these stand among their cactus superiors in meek 
yet sweet humility. 

The gorge grows in grandeur as you pass over this last ascend- 
ing point, and begin a descent often leagues, almost thirty miles, to 
the city at its base. The sides of the cliffs are equally fantastic, 
now hollowed in, now rounded out, now capped with horizontal pil- 
lars, now buttressed with a bluff" running a half mile out of its side, 
an enormous roll, but nothing to the wall it seems to support. 

Soon, on the left, the steady outline is broken into three separate 
ranges. The first is short, not over a mile or two in length. It 
starts up sheer and unbroken from the bottom, a scarped wall of 
silver gray. On its centre and top two caps are set, of the same 
stratified rock, whiter than the bases below, of enormous size and 



"A HOLE IN THE WALL."" 3gi 

regular shape. They look like guardsmens' hats, and well become 
these watchers of the vale. 

The next range is not less than ten miles long, and is more 
varied in outline, though below, at the city, it looks so like a mitre 
that it bears that name. Far up its side, close at the edge of that 
same stratified summit, a bit of a hole lets you into a marvelous 
cave. But how to get to the hole is the question. It looks impos- 
sible, but a gentleman riding with me says he has done it. A safe 
but very steep path leads up that sheer, swart, hot wall. It was 
built by an American, who fell a martyr to the revolution a year 
ago. 

The last range is before us, and tfack of the city, which lies hid- 
den at its base, a huge piece, seemingly cut out of its ridge, making 




.*-^-?.i^.^ 



SADDLE MOUNTAIN. 



it look like a Mexican saddle, and hence its name of Saddle Mount- 
ain. It is a quaint feature in the scene. More quaint, however, 
is a hole on the opposite side. Near to the top of that ridge you 
see a hole clean through the face of the rock, opening to the light 
opposite. It looks from the valley as of the size of a hat. It is 
really large enough to let a yoke of oxen and their cart go through, 
though I have never heard of that being attempted. Whoever 
should attempt it would " hitch his wagon to a star," as Emerson 

26 



392 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

advises; Charles's Wain, of course, is already thus hitched. My 
fellow-traveler says you can go over all the world and never see a 
sight like that, a hole opened through a mountain cliff. It is a 
hundred feet below the summit ; but it is easily attained, if one 
seeks adventures. The hills on that side, in their ravines, show 
how intense is the heat ; for those hollows, even up to their sum- 
mits, are filled with green shrubs, and grasses, and trees. Where 
snow Vv^ould lie in Switzerland, flowers and grasses of tropical qual- 
ity grow here. 

Santa Caterina is the name of the village at the base of this true 
"hole in the wall." In a shop in this rancho I find on the coun- 
ter a picture of the Virgin, framed in tin, for sale, tin and all, for 
two reals. The engraving puts a crown on her head, and in its 
corner drawings make her alike crowned, and men her worship- 
ers. I tried my broken Spanish on the vender, saying, "Non 
Maria, pero Jesu Cristo solo " (Not Mary, but Jesus Christ only). 
This picture is one of many proofs of the reigning idolatry ; for 
idolatry complete it is ; none more so in India. The very term, 
which this picture recalls, "Queen of Heaven," was the exact 
ascription given to Astarte, the wickedest goddess of history, lust- 
ful as Venus, wrathful as Moloch — that bottom of hell, a fallen 
woman. Yet her boastful title is given to the sweet, humble, mod- 
est "Mother of our Lord." How the mountain views disappear 
before the condition of this people, revealed in that twenty-five- 
cent goddess. These also shall perish ; they shall not endure ; 
they shall be wrapped together as a scroll, and melt away as these 
hills have here once melted and stiffened. But of the poor souls 
that perish here for the lack of knowledge, it is said, they shall nev- 
er be destroyed — dead, lost, perhaps, but never destroyed. We 
should forget all sight of earth in the passion for the souls of 
men. 

Here is one at this rancho door, whom I met with at San Grego- 
rio, that I have hopes may yet be brought to serve this people. He 
is quite black, was once a slave in Kentucky, who fought in our 
war as a soldier, was transferred to the border at its close, and de- 



A BLACK "SMITHS 



393 



serted to Mexico. He is very intelligent and comely; has good 
employment by the diligence company in shoeing their mules, for 
which he gets sixty dollars a month. He wears the wide sombrero, 
silver-mounted and tasteful. He is quite a favorite here, and was 
promised a captaincy in the last revolt if he would serve Diaz. 
He was born near Lexington, Kentucky, and his name is Charles 
Smith. His parents were Methodists, and he ought to be. He 
can not read or write, because of his early condition. How little 
his master thought that boy would be riding about in a sombrero, 
silver-banded and bound and gayly set off, the pet of the owners 
and passengers of the route. 




Blsiroi''S RESIDENCE, MONTEREY. 

We now pass along the side of the Valley of St. Peter, a very 
handsome wooded and meadowed plain under the western mount- 
ains, among the wild chaparral, the terrible mixture of thorn-bushes 
of every sort, through which our soldiers climbed to the top of this 
low hill on our left, where they stormed the bishop's residence on 
that hill, which is now a ruin. In this charge, Lieut. Grant got his 
first promotion, but declined it, because another was also promoted, 
saying, "If Lieut. deserves promotion, I do not." 



394 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

The road still glides downward, amidst blossoming orchards, tall 
and fragrant, gardens and flower-beds, into the city, down its still 
slight incline to the plaza and my pleasant quarters. 

The heat is intense. It is in a tunnel of mountains that draws 
all the rays. But the largest and coolest of the hotels of the dili- 
gence company refreshes me. This hotel concludes our sojourn- 
ings of such sort ; for only ranchos await us nightly betweein this 
city and the Gulf. Its wide porches, and flower- full patio, and 
plumed and singing birds surpass Saltillo's and all before. 

It is Saturday, and the last Sunday in the country is to be passed 
here. A bath seems the first necessary preparative. So I go to 
the shop of my German co-traveler, a sombrero manufacturer, and 
get as near his chamber as a huge dog permits. He tells me, what 
I tell you, never to take a bath in this country in the afternoon. 
A gentleman, he says, came up from Matamoras, took a bath after 
his arrival, and died before the next morning. I content myself 
with a hand-bath, which is as good as the more formal ablutions. 

This same gentleman gives me another bit of information more 
in the line of his business, yet having an inference wider even than 
a sombrero brim. He says the Mexican heads average six and 
three-quarters and six and seven-eighths, hatters' sizes ; Americans 
average seven and an eighth. I had noticed the difficulty of get- 
ting hats, in the capital and elsewhere, large enough for the heads 
of American travelers, and called his attention to it. This fact was 
given in reply. That is the size of the heads of our boys at twelve. 
Does it mark, then, a type of civilization, and their relation to the 
bigger-headed and bigger-brained races of the Teuton type? 

I spent the rest of the day in hunting up some of these big- 
headed brothers. The first I found was as small of head and body 
as the people among whom he dwelt. He was the missionary of 
the American Board, the Rev. John Beveredge, a slim, sickly gen- 
tleman, whose lungs had driven him first to South America, and 
then to this everlasting summer. The Master has modes to-day 
of scattering His apostles, and so increasing His Church, less terri- 
ble, but not less certain, than those which prevailed in the earliest 



MISS RANKIN'S WORK. 395 

times. Then Herod drew his sword, and the Church fled hither 
and yon, carrying the Word. Now He draws the sword Himself, 
sends piercing blasts through sensitive lungs and feeble frames ; 
and lo ! these saints fly to more genial climes, preaching the Word. 
Thus the Gospel gets planted in Monterey. 

Miss Rankin was its real planter. She came up here from Mat- 
amoras, led by love of souls. She had gone to Brownsville, for 
family reasons. When there she visited Matamoras, and saw the 
ignorance that settled, a thick cloud, upon the people. She gath- 
ered some children into a school, and began to teach them and 
their elders the way of the Lord the more perfectly. She finally 
found herself drawn three hundred miles into the country, and 
Monterey became her chosen seat. She succeeded in establishing 
over a dozen schools and preaching places, which she supplied 
with native assistants. The best of bodies break down under such 
labors, and she had to retreat. She left her work in charge of the 
American and Foreign Christian Union, and they in turn transfer- 
red it to the American Board. Mr. Beveredge was superintending 
this work. He had several helpers, who came and heard him in 
the morning, and in the afternoon preached the same sermon in 
the villages round about. Much good was being done by these ef- 
forts. But he had his warfare in his own Protestant household. 

A Baptist preacher had come thither and organized his church. 
He had done his work efficiently, and therefore differences had 
sprung up among the few and feeble Protestants. A discussion 
had been going forward between Messrs. Beveredge and Westrup 
in the form of letters, which had been collected by the former into 
a pamphlet, and entitled " En Cristo o en Agua" (In Christ or in 
Water). This title looks like begging the question. Being, as one 
has remarked, of " impartial bias " in this contest, I visited both 
meetings. About the same number, not far from twenty-five, were 
present at each. The Baptists held a Sunday-school, their preach- 
er being out in the villages. After service I talked with them, and 
found them well watered. They were none the less good Chris- 
tians for that, and none the more. One lady walked my way 



396 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

homeward. I conversed with her in my broken Spanish, and 
found her a Close -communion Baptist of the first water. Some 
complained of this contest. But I went into a Roman Church, 
and heard the most eloquent preacher I had seen in the country, 
declaiming with great passion to a crowded house against Protest- 
antism. Mr. Beveredge told me he was very active and violent in 
his opposition. This conflict of creeds caused his zeal. It show- 
ed that somebody in that city was interested in other forms of 
Christian faith. These despised sects were like two dogs, who 
might trot along the streets in equal contempt and neglect ; but if 
they stopped and began to fight, a ring was instantly formed, a 
crowd interested, and the dogs themselves arise in dog rank in 
their own judgment and in those of their enemies. So Protestant- 
ism is growing in and by its own internal and fraternal feuds. 

There is need enough of it. The Sabbath is the best business 
day of the week. The churches, save where the inflammatory 
priest preaches, are deserted of men, and well-nigh of women. 
There is no spiritual life in all the people. Surely any breathing 
is better than death. 

In the heart of the town is a fountain of rare abundance, clear- 
ness, and sweetness. The Eye of the Town it is called, and those 
who drink of it, it is said, can never get away from the city. It 
was near midnight, and the coach was to start in three hours ; but 
I risked it, drank, and got away. It was delicious enough, though, 
to make me long for it still, and may yet bring me back to its lip. 

The Alameda of this city is not equal in rural beauty to that 
of Saltillo, but as it is the last we shall see, it is not unworthy of 
praise. Nor is it unworthy in itself A walled park, with drives, 
shrubbery, trees, and flowers, well kept, it is one of the loveliest of 
its sort I have seen. It will be a new and improved era when all 
our cities have such pretty drives and gardens. 

A less agreeable sight are the spots on that blank white wall in 
a gardenless square. They are the holes where the bullets that 
missed the men who stood before the wall picked their way into 
its mortar. It is the place of execution. Even lately has it been 



.IMPENDING REVOLUTIONS. 



397 




ALAMEDA, MONTEREY. 

the scene of such military settlements of political quarrels. That 
blotted wall bespeaks another trait of the city. It is a fertile field 
for revolutions. 

The air of Monterey was full of revolution. Diaz had held out 
a year against the government of Juarez and Lerdo, and many 
were looking and longing for another outbreak. This does not 
propose to take the old form, but to follow that of Texas : " Inde- 
pendence and Annexation." But Texas warns them that that is 
submission to the American ; and they hesitate, and will. Better 
work their destiny out in their own lives and language under the 
guidance of the American faith. 



398 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



XII. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

Rancho de Villa de General Trevina. — A Sign of Home. — A misty Escort. — 
Blistering Morin. — Chaparral. — The changed Face of Nature. — The Yankee 
Hat and Hut. — Mesas, or Table-lands. — The bottom Rancho : Garcia. — 
Mier. — Comargo. — The Grand River unseen, yet ever near.^Last Night in a 
Rancho. — La Antigua Renosa. 

A RIDE since three o'clock this morning is an excuse for sleep- 
ing at near the midnight hour, especially as two will find me up 
again. But the sight of a petroleum lamp is such a novelty that 
one can not help being kept awake a little season. I have not 
seen one on a hotel table before since I left the States. It is like 
the land -birds Columbus saw, harbingers of home. Not twenty 
leagues off is the Rio Grande. To-morrow's breakfast, if all goes 
as well as it has gone, will be eaten on its banks. This rancho has, 
therefore, a value above itself; as a guide-post near your native 
village, when returning thither, is far more than cross-beams and 
common letters. It glows with a glory and a beauty not its own. 
I am getting to like ranchos. This Rancho de Villa de General 
Trevina, despite its big name, is very cordial. The dinner is 
good, service amiable, X^-a-fuerte, and the bed lies provokingly near, 
in nice white sheets, too nice and white for this dust-covered form, 
saying, " Come and rest." 

The day broke on me well out of the gardens and grandeurs of 
Monterey. Three hours I slept, while the sick mules ran out of 
that paradise, and regained outwardly and inwardly Paradise lost. 
A thick mist hung around the few low hills, reminiscences of the 
tall Sierra Madre. The mist was sticky and ocean-like, and I fan- 
cied it had come up from the Gulf to escort me thither. It would 



MORIN, AND ITS PEOPLE. 3gg 

have badly spoiled the roads had it done so, for the rain and the 
soil make a black and pitchy mixture which is well-nigh untravers- 
able. I greeted it as an old friend, despite the fear that it might 
stick a good deal closer than we desire the best of old friends, all 
the time, to do. But the sun got the mastery of it, and of every 
thing else, and blazed away without let or hinderance. At the end 
of eleven leagues we made the town of Morin, a white and blis- 
tering place, its sun-dried adobe still reproducing the sun too daz- 
zlingly. No trees, no shaded walks, no pleasant fruit and farm- 
trading plaza — only a white heat. A cup of coldish water was its 
only relief. 

One hardly expected to find even so agreeable a town ;. for an 
almost perfect desolation preceded it for many miles. The chap- 
arral everyv^here abounded, tall and briery. A clearing or two 
showed that the land was fertile, and only wanted inclosing and 
clearing up to be very fruitful. Cattle and horses and sheep were 
wandering among the chaparral, finding good herbage. The land 
did not look like Mexico. It was not high, hilly, or dry. It was 
moist, bushy, wild, and naturally and easily productive. 

Nor did the people look like Mexicans. They had the Yankee 
hat and look, head-gear and complexion, every thing but the Yan- 
kee log-hut ; but their ranches are as bad, so the equality of re- 
semblance continues. 

From Morin you begin to get a view of the general lay of the 
land. Leaving out that low sierra in front of us, which we shall 
soon circumvent and omit from the scene, you note, as the charac- 
teristic, that it slides off in successive terraces, miles wide. It be- 
gan at Monterey, eight hundred feet above the Gulf It declines 
gradually to the sea -level. Probably half of it is made at this 
place. 

The mesas, or tables, as these landspreads are called, are broad 
and level, and from them you see a lower but not low valley, wider 
than themselves, spreading out for scores of miles, until its green 
is lost in the blue of the sky. As you descend easily and by very 
short falls into this lower valley, you find that it is not a complete 



400 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

level, but a succession of slight fallings off. So you dip down, lit- 
tle by little, to the sea. A half-dozen leagues from Morin, we go 
through a dismal rancho with a grand name, which I have forgot- 
ten. All these ranchos have grand names, and nothing else. Its 
wells are numerous, and have a stone curb and two stone pillars 
that support the beam that holds the rope that lifts the pail. 

This hill we run down amidst chaparral of very fine greenness, 
but of no present value. Our halt for breakfast is at the rancho 
Garcia, the bottom of our experiences. Our meal is served under 
a thatched roof with bamboo sides, with the tortillas frying, and the 
smoke ascending and descending, especially the latter. The girls 
are dirtier, if possible, than the food. It seemed impossible to taste 
their filthy dishes. But hunger, like necessity, knows no law ; and 
a little nibbling carries us on till night-fall. 

The trees stand grand about the smoky hut, and the natives 
lounge under the grandest one. As a dessert, I get up a broken 
talk with them, and so overcome the cry of hunger within. The 
still better cry of " Vaminos " calls me gladly away from the tree 
and rancho. The road pursues the same path through an open, 
empty, thorn-covered country, rich for every manner of fruit, when 
it can have rest and an intelligent population. Night finds us in 
a town of huts, whose name I have lost. It was called, as most are 
hereabouts, for some general of a revolution, and will probably be 
changed after the next pronunciamento for his name who shall 
then make a successful revolt of a moment. But the narrow room 
is cleanly ; its hard earthen floor is smooth and swept, and after 
Garcia its meal is metropolitan. 

We are up and off at three, through the same dull landscape, 
hardly varied now with glimpse of hill, green, flowery, capable, and 
empty. We are pulling straight for the river ; when we reach it 
we shall turn Gulfward. Open and settled spaces reveal them- 
selves as we get near the American line, and our breakfast is 
served at noon in the quite bustling Mier. A Frenchman from 
Paris, via New York, gets up a goodly meal of mixed American and 
Parisian sort. The school is just out, and boys are lounging, in 



SIGNS OF HOME. 401 

true Yankee fashion, about the coach. The town is half Mexican, 
half American. Open fields and open windows show the North- 
erner is here. Adobe houses and blank walls and big coach doors 
show the Mexican is here also. England and Spain meet and min- 
gle on the outskirts of either realm. 

A pull till four, through like expressionless countr}', brings us to 
Comargo, the Rio Bravo, and the end of Mexico, though thirty-six 
hours still remain between being on the one bank and on the oth- 
er of the Grand and Brave river. This border town is the clean- 
est and dullest of all between Monterey and Matamoras. An in- 
let of the Rio Grande, quite a stream, puts up behind the town, and 
is crossed by a tedious ferriage. The steep bank is pulled up, 
and the broad plaza stretches out, a third of a mile almost. At 
its upper end are Government buildings, spacious, pretty, and cool. 
At its lower end is a covered market, an unseen sight farther in- 
land, swept, garnished, and empty. A few stores inclose the square 
on its two sides parallel with the two rivers. Here I get my last 
packet of silver, and the coach proceeds in the gathering sunset 
hours adown the banks of the river. Its waters are not seen, but I 
know they are only a mile or so away, and that that Northern sky 
is over the land of my fathers and my faith. 

The trees grow large, the fields are open and cultivated. Every 
thing is American and fascinating. No matter how much we may 
admire foreign sights, home sights are ever the tenderer and love- 
lier. Brilliant Mexico, with its magnificent volcanoes, barrancas, 
and haciendas ; its wonderful flowering and fruit ; its orange or- 
chards and banana groves and maguey prairies ; its ancient piles 
and its modern — all are forgotten in the familiar landscape of 
this semi-northern river. It is near midnight ere we reach our 
last rancho for the night. La Antigua Renosa. 

The rancho is, like its creator man, susceptible of progress. These 
three nights have demonstrated this. Each good as compared with 
fears and with maledictions, the present and last is the best. A 
dozen new chairs of Yankee make, hard-bottomed, brown-painted, 
are arranged around the room, as if they were expecting a prayer- 



402 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

meeting, or a log-cabin preaching. The table has nice white ware, 
also of the latest Yankee pattern ; the Yankee candle stands in its 
shining brass candlestick in a plate in the centre. Surely here is 
no antiqua Renosa, but one most modern. But even this word is 
modernized, for the name they gave me was, Los Renos a Viejo, or 
some such affair ; Viejo is too old-fashioned a word, and so gives 
place to La Antigua — " old " to " ancient." 

The dinner, at eleven o'clock at night, is being got ready. Not 
old that ; they never prepare that till the passengers come. The 
coaches from Matamoras have just arrived, and quite a crowd 
criss-cross at this out-of-the-way corner. Longfellow's "Wayside 
Inn" could much more properly have been written of this spot 
than of Sudbury, where such characters as his could no more have 
been weather-bound than born. 

A good meal follows, and a good sleep, though all too short ; for 
at four we are off, half asleep still. 



WRITING AND RIDING. 



403 



XIII. 

JOLTINGS AND JOTTINGS. 

A Creator and an Imitator. — Church-making and Carriage-writing. — The old- 
est Church and the youngest. — Compagnons du Voyage. — A Brandy-sucker. 
— Prohibition for Mexico. — Talks with the Coachman and Mozo. — Hides and 
Shoes. — San Antonio. — Its Casa and Inmates. — Rancho Beauties. — Women's 
Rights in Mexico. — Sermonizing in the Wilderness. — A Night on Stage-top. 
— Fantastic Forms. — Spiritual Phantasms. — Light in a dark Place. — Mata- 
moras and Brownsville. 

"John Wesley created a Church," said an ambitious minister 
not long since ; " why may not I ?" One effort to imitate that ex- 
ample would have satisfied the aspirant. Many have tried it be- 
fore and since, but few with such results : Mr. Weinbrenner, Mr. 
Shinn, Mr. Capers, Mr. Scott, Mr. Campbell; but they did not make 
such a big thing of it after all. I heard a good story in Mexico of 
Mr. Campbell and his church. The late Roman Catholic Arch- 
bishop of Baltimore was talking with an earnest female Campbell- 
ite cousin of his. Said he, " If I was not a Roman Catholic, I 
would be a Campbellite." "Why so?" asks the lady, delighted at 
this half a loaf " Because," he answers, " if I did not belong to 
the oldest Church, I would to the youngest." 

Now, if I can not imitate John Wesley in creating a Church, I 
can try to copy his example in a hardly less remarkable gift, writ- 
ing in a coach. If this is so very difficult, as the compositors would 
affirm could they but see the sheets on which this is penciled, how 
much more difficult must it have been for his ecclesiastical compo- 
sition. True, I have not his smooth roads and table fitted to the 
carriage, but I have a road almost as good, and a slow and easy-go- 
ing coach. The last day in Mexico I may well be treated to this 
luxury. I am nearing Matamoras, having been for twenty days, 



404 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Sundays excepted, an occupant of a locomotive house, which, 
though changing itself regularly, has never really changed. It has 
ever been the self-same vehicle, of a faded red without, a dirty and 
dusty leathern buff within. Along its upper edge has always been 
printed, " Empresa Diligencias Generales," or General Diligence 
Company. Here I have laid off, sometimes on nine seats, almost 
always on three, slept much, seen much, talked little, read less, and 
written least. I have had many talks with myself, because I had 
no better or worse companion, if worse there could be j sad talks 
and pleasant, worrysome and worryless. 

As it was the only seat taken through, so not many others have 
been occupied for even an occasional posta. One started from 
Mexico with me, whom I left at Queretaro, as my going forward 
•would have necessitated my riding on the Sabbath, and from that, 
my edition of the Litany reads, '' Good Lord, deliver us." And He 
has so far delivered me. He has also added a favor not especially 
asked, and allowed me to speak in every city of Sabbath sojourn, 
save one, the words of His grace. That one, Queretaro, I strove 
hard to get three English-hearing people to arrange a service. I 
failed, perhaps because I did not ask the lady of the trio. She 
would have let me in, I think. 

I took up one and another companion for short stages, one of 
whom I recall as a very polite gentleman, who gave me much in- 
formation, talking slowly and distinctly, so that my untrained ear 
might distinguish the words, a gift my untrained coachman never 
could attain. 

His successor, for a posta, was of another type. Bringing a 
leathern bottle with him, with a very small faucet, he kept steadi- 
ly sucking brandy out of that tiny hole, leaning back his head to 
catch the oozing drop, slowly descending, as if it was ashamed to 
leave the upper leathery bag for the baser human one below. I 
was rejoiced to see any such sign of a not utterly fallen sort of 
brandy. It does harm enough to more than offset this only symp- 
tom of a better nature. It is the drink of all foreigners and the 
better-off class of natives. I have seen Germans nearly drain a full 



GARRULOUSNESS OF MOZOS. 405 

flask in a single day's ride ; and an Englishman pour a half-tum- 
bler, undiluted by water, down the throat of a six-year-old daugh- 
ter. Of course, they themselves set the bigger example ; for our 
English brothers are the hardest drinkers in the world, or are only 
excelled by their American cousins, who excel them in debauch- 
ery, since these trample conscience under their lust of appetite, or 
more usually, fear of man ; for it is love of fashion, rather than love 
of liquor, that makes the American drink. How glad I was to 
read in Monterey last Saturday that Massachusetts had repealed 
the Beer Act, and by such a grand majority. The fall of '66 is 
the rising again of '73. Though she may fall again, it will only 
be to a perpetual struggle until she shall attain a permanent de- 
liverance. How far shines that good "deed in this naughty world ! 
Away across the country, and into this land, that no more dreams 
of Prohibition than it does of Protestantism, burns this ray of the 
coming sun that shall renew the face of all the land and of all 
lands. 

But the few people of the coach have not interested me so much 
as the coachmen themselves. They and their mozos have been a 
constant study. The one that took me across the battle-field of 
Buena Vista was a vehement talker, especially after he had been 
promised a dollar if he would deliver me at Saltillo two hours 
earlier than his accustomed time. He described every mountain, 
some of them, I have no doubt, for the first time, and with a nomen- 
clature of his own creation. He described the plants and their 
qualities — this for soup, and that for medicine ; went over the whole 
battle-field and battle as though his side had conquered, just as 
our guides do to British visitors at Bunker Hill. 

Yesterday's drivers were of a younger sort. They were near of 
an age, not far from twenty-four. Usually the mozo is a lad, the 
driver a man of forty. These, boys as they looked, drank muscat, 
a strong liquor of the smell of whisky, lashed and stoned the tired 
mules beyond boyish enthusiasm, sang, and were jolly exceedingly. 
They knew but little, and seemed glad they knew no more. The 
driver was smart, dark, fine-looking, and would make a good gen- 



4o6 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

eral or preacher, if he had had the chance of the one, or the grace 
of the other. 

To-day's mozo is of another type. The driver slept all the morn- 
ing under his seat, and I acted the part of the mozo, plying the 
lash to the rear mule, and the stones to the leaders, as if anxious 
to show my zeal in order to get promoted. The poor fellows were 
so sick with the epizootic that they could hardly move. And the 
only response they made to my applications, not sermohic, was a 
kick or two occasionally from the off-mule. Or was it the nigh 
one? My horsemanship can not answer that conundrum. They 
did right to kick. As Balaam's ass was wiser than he, so these, 
his half-brothers, were wiser than the half-brother of that prophet. 
For they had dragged the coach in on the last night's posta, and 
then, with only four hours' rest, had been compelled to drag it back 
again ; and sick at that. No wonder they were Jio quiere to any 
request for them to urge their step beyond the slowest walk. I 
beg their pardon for my stony salutations. They made the five 
leagues in five hours, less than three miles an hour, and they did 
well. 

Between the beatings with whip and stones, in which latter I be- 
came quite expert, I talked to the mozo on all sorts of subjects : 
home, business, prospects, religion. He said that he was thirty- 
seven years old ; married at thirty. His wife was then fifteen. He 
had one child, Thomas, aged four. He had no more children ; 
it cost so much to support them, and they all took to drink. He 
said ladies were called young at twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and 
as late as fifteen, but old at twenty. His wife attended church, 
but he was kept at work on the road Sunday, and rested Monday, 
just in order to break the Sabbath. He thought I must be rich : 
worth not less than two hundred thousand dollars, and was sur- 
prised to see that fortune dwindle to naught. What could I be? 
he asks. "Fredicado" I say. It was a sort of Spanish he had 
never heard, nor I either before I used it ; but it was a guess at 
" preacher." A '■'■ padre " he knew too well, and a friar ; but a 
preacher was a new vocation. So I added, for his illumination, " a 



THE DIFFERENCE — WHY? 407 

missionary." "Romanista?" "No! Metodista." " Protestante ?" 
" Si." He is a little surprised at this, and ready to draw back, for 
his wife's faith has a hold upon him. He soon recovers, and tells 
me about a sefiora who had often passed over this road. " Seno- 
ra who ?" " Sefiora Protestante — Senora Virga," he adds. A new 
phrase to me, as I had supposed that senora was only applied to 
married ladies, senorita being the unmarried title. He showed 
that the Spanish followed the English custom, which very properly 
calls unmarried ladies of mature age after the married ladies' title. 
Yet, as a maid with them is old when past fifteen, this remark is 
not as sure a proof of advancing years as it might be in higher lat- 
itudes. 

I thought he was trying to say something about the Senora of 
Guadalupe ; so I sought in this direction. But I found I was off 
the track. It flashed upon me. " Senora at Monterey ?" " Si ! 
si !" " Senora Rankin ?" " Si !" This lady's work and fame have 
thus made her known to the common people. And well she de- 
serves to be, for hers is by far the best work in all this part of the 
country. 

We pass a load of ox-hides. "How much are they worth?" 
"A real apiece, here; In Matamoras, a real and medio." " How 
much do your boots cost?" "In Matamoras, four dollars and a 
half; in Monterey, seven dollars." So they sell the hide for twelve 
and a half cents, or get eighteen and three-quarters by carrying it 
a hundred miles, two weeks' journey (fifteen miles being a good 
day's journey for mules and oxen), and then pay from four and a 
half to seven dollars to get that same hide transformed into a pair 
of boots. So much for the difference between Mexico and Massa- 
chusetts. No more duty protects the latter than the former. Not 
so much, probably ; for every thing here is taxed, and taxed hor- 
ribly. 

He asks which I like best, Mexico or the United States. " Both," 
I diplomatically answer. I try to describe the beauty and wealth 
of Mexico, and the comfort of the people of the States, especially 
the poor ; floors to their rooms, not earth, as here ; chairs, tables, 

27 



4o8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

beds, all nearly unknown. His eye flashed with longings for that 
goodly land. When will ours be altogether such, and this be like it ? 

I asked how long it would take to reach the next posta : "An 
hour?" "Two." "No, one." "Two." He drew out a dollar, 
and offered to bet. So I had the privilege of resisting no severe 
temptation, especially as there was not even a watch among us 
three ; and therefore it would not have been possible to prove ei- 
ther true, I had also the better privilege of setting forth the evils 
of gambling ; how it made him lose all his wages, leave his wife 
and child without bread, and otherwise destroy him. I was aston- 
ished at my liberty of prophesying in the unknown tongue, and 
could almost see how that the love of Christ, without a miracle, 
under the mighty breathings of the Holy Ghost, could make the 
disciples speak with other tongues. The Spirit gave them utter- 
ance. 

The village of San Antonio is reached at length, a blazing speck 
of white on a low hill overhanging the Rio Grande. It looks al- 
most as pretty as a New England town, as you approach it through 
the interminable groves of mesquite. But enter it. Only a per- 
petual fire, a perpetual desolation. The huge plaza is without 
shrub or speck to mitigate its whiteness. Not a flower to relieve 
the white heat of the houses. Many of the houses are in ruins. 
The church has a skull near its entrance, an appropriate symbol 
of the town. 

Yet here I found several things of a contrary sort. There are 
a custom-house and its ofiicers : for this is a smuggling port, and 
each nation has its officers to protect its rights, or its claims rather, 
for rights in customs there are none. People have as much right 
to carry their wares across the line as to cross it themselves. It 
looks as if these officers had killed the town, for smuggling was 
its life. 

The place where we had our breakfast was another novelty. It 
was a casa with three rooms, the first large, with a wide bed in the 
corner of the American type. All Mexican beds are single. It 
also had high-posters, after the old American fashion. Its dirty 



A RANCHO BEAUTY. 409 

pillow-cases suggested livelier dirt below. A fashion-plate and a 
fancy girl of the period — a bright-colored Hartford print — set off 
the walls, evidently showing travel on the part of the ladies of the 
house or desire for it, there being no room for fashion-plates in the 
rebosa and skirt, which compose their usual costume. 

I glanced into the kitchen, and concluded to take a nearer view. 
It was a farmer's kitchen, larger by far than any rancho or peon 
could boast of Its high thatched roof looked cool, and the smoke 
from its tortilla frying-pan wandered unharmed and unharming 
among the rafters. The good lady, young at forty, sat on the 
ground, busy over her stew-pans. A daughter, of the overripe age 
of sixteen, was frying the tortillas, which a twelve-year-old young 
lady was kneading. A taller miss, between the two, was walk- 
ing about in a very draggly pink skirt, and a very old daughter of, 
possibly, eighteen, sat on the ground, assisting her mother. Three 
younger girls were sitting or toddling around, and a ten-year-old 
was chatting with a boy of like age, while also busy with kitchen 
duties of the vegetable sort. I was surprised to see so large a 
crowd, and they were doubtless more surprised to see me, with my 
unwashed and unshorn face, huge sombrero,, and dusty garments, 
peering into their common room. 

But they were too near the border to be disturbed by this Yan- 
kee freedom. The good lady told me that these were all her 
daughters. The boy was not hers ; he was an outsider. She has 
eight children, seven daughters. They were unusually comely, 
and the one just a little year beyond "young," according to our 
mozo, would make an impression in any society. She was as 
beautiful as the ragged and almost naked Apollo lad whom I had 
seen as near the beginning of the trip as I had this industrious and 
modest Venus near its end. I could easily see how my Vermont 
brother in Saltillo had been swept from his bachelor moorings by 
a rancho beauty. As she sat there on the ground frying tortillas, 
she made one think of Thackeray's "Peg of Limovaddy :" 

" Hebe's self, I thought, 
Entered the apartment : 



4IO OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

As she came she smiled, 

And the smile bewitching, 
On my word and honor, 

Lighted all the kitchen. 
See her as she moves ; 

Scarce the ground she touches, 
Airy as a fay. 

Graceful as a duchess." 

This maiden of San Antonio had like natural graces, and was 
doomed to a like wasting of them on this desert air. What would 
not this group of superior girls do with the advantages of superior 
society ? Culture and Christ would make them all beautiful with- 
in. Now they were comely of countenance ; then, also, of soul. 
Yet perhaps they are safer and happier in this humble obscurity 
than if exposed to a city's culture and a city's shame. May this 
family be kept as godly as goodly. 

The dinner was hardly equal to the handsome, youthful cooks 
who had prepared it. In variety it was sufficient. Four ways of 
preparing meat, and two of eggs ; but its ways were too new for me. 
Soup, made by stewing fat meat in water, was eagerly drank by the 
coachman, but was too greasy for my palate. The two fattest parts 
of the meat, served up separately, were pointed out by the gentle- 
man of the house as especially excellent. Solid junks of fat they 
were, and each was eaten by the cochero and his mozo as confirm- 
atory of the landlord's judgment. The fry, and the tortillas, and 
the unmilked coffee, and the poor water,just made the dinner pass- 
able, and that only because I was comforted with the thought that 
one more meal, and Brownsville and a beefsteak were mine. The 
handsome cooks spoiled the broth, and a plainer face apd better 
cuisine would have been more agreeable. Thackeray wisely omits 
the description of Peg's dinner. 

A sign of the esteem in which the fair, fat, and forty lady of the 
house is held by her husband, or a token of the manner in which 
she rules him, is made manifest to all visitors ; for is it not printed 
in good round letters on one of the beams that crosses the ceiling 
of the dining-room ? 



THE COMING WOMAN. 411 

"Cedo, yo, Francisco, esta Casa a mi Sposa, Maria Lucia Zepada de 

conclingo." 
(/, Francisco, give this house to my wife, Mary Lucia Zepada de Conclingo.) 

How many husbands have the courage to make like proclama- 
tion ? "Very uncommon in Mexico," says the American custom- 
house clerk ; very uncommon anywhere. Yet the fact is not un- 
common. In a town adjoining Boston, a gentleman said his was 
the only house that was not deeded to the wife of the occupant. 
Better put the fact over the door. Still, though the wives own all the 
best houses in that large town, and can sell them, and be sued for 
them, they can not vote to protect them, to keep out the liquor-shops 
which injure their property, and to create a government which shall 
improve it. I read in the coach to-day that the Maine House of 
Representatives had voted woman the ballot. The Senate should 
follow its example. It is the seal of assurance to her liquor legisla- 
tion. It is the only salvation of the ballot-box from the stuffing and 
bribing abominations of to-day. Senora Maria Lucia Zepada, etc., 
is a sign of the coming woman in the State, in all save her cooking. 
She looks as if able to bear her honors, with her large and healthy 
and handsome family ; not a solitary and sickly unit, to which so- 
cial ideas now diminish and degrade the household. With her 
abundant kitchenly ways, owning her casa and honoring it, shall 
she not also jointly own and honor the State ? 

Much more, the Church ; for there her heart is, and her treasure 
also. Let not the Church lag behind the State in opening every 
door to her admittance. Let her be welcomed, especially when 
she is knocking at these doors ; nay, when the Lord has Himself 
come down from heaven and opened these doors, not by sending 
His angel, but by the abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit with 
signs following. Not more clearly was Paul thrust among the un- 
willing Peter and his ten — the vacancy in the apostolate being kept 
open by the Head of the Church for his admission — than is the 
sisterhood of the Church thrust by the same Head into like fellow- 
ship with their elder, but not superior, brethren. He that hath ears 
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. 



412 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

" JBuen /" (Well), as they say here, the same as we ; our bad din- 
ner has given us a good long dessert in the shape of a dull sermon. 

" Now good digestion wait on appetite, 
And health on both." 

Good-bye to the hung beef, a clothes-line of which is stretched 
across the yard ; to the poor cooking and pretty faces ; to the casa 
and its owner; and, it must be confessed, to the somewhat hen- 
pecked-looking husband and father ; to the custom-house friends ; 
and to San Antonio. 

The hot day drags to its close. The mules onward " plod their 
weary way." Gray's ox is not slower. How their prancing fleet- 
ness is changed. 

The same green wood everywhere embraces me that has em- 
braced me for this last two hundred miles — mesquite, mesquite, 
mesquite. It sometimes rises to the height of an apple or willow, 
very rarely to that of a maple. Brush is its proper level. Grass, 
weeds, thorny bushes, ground-flower cactuses of yellow and purple 
and magnificent crimson, humble, but hardly less beautiful, thorn- 
less pink, and daisy, and dandelion — very old, dear, homely, and 
homeful creatures — and chiquitite, tiniest flowers of every sort, 
a bed of beauty ; such is the rich, green desolate valley on the 
Mexican side of the Grand River of the North. 

For three hundred miles it is practically without inhabitant. 
Not less so is the American side. Every inch fertile, and capable, 
like the ground of a certain rich man, of bringing forth abundantly. 
Why should so many starve and pinch and toil when this abun- 
dance goes untouched ? How alike is the God of nature and of 
grace ! Ever thus He spreads His table of salvation in the wilder- 
ness, and ever thus man prefers starving in sin to sumptuous fare at 
His overladen board. For four thousand years has He said, " Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no 
money ; come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come, buy wine and milk with- 
out money and without price." Still they come not ; they dig 
out their own broken cisterns ; they eat their own tasteless food. 



A NIGHT ON THE COACH- TOP. 413 

Shall it be always so ? Will every generation thus treat the Lord 
and His royal feasts ? Many have come ; more will. 

These lands are filling up. Those superb white Roman Cam- 
pagna oxen that just passed us are driven by a new settler. That 
pretty log-hut, with its half-dozen Yankee-looking men and women 
at its door, is the first I have seen in Mexico. How like Minne- 
sota it looks. Only Minnesota does not have such a soft spring 
garb on this second day of April. They are the indices of the 
coming myriads that will make this lovely desert lovelier with hu- 
man life and love. So shall the overflowing and ever-neglected 
gifts of God in Christ, this wilderness of grace, this prairie ocean 
of salvation, be more and more appropriated by the sinful, sensual 
heart of man, famishing for bread, hungering and thirsting after the 
righteousness of Christ. They shall reject alike the crudities of 
superstition and of false and haughty self-sufficiency, the religion 
of idolatry and of a spurious humanity, and, sitting at the feet of 
Christ, Creator, Saviour, Brother, shall grow up into Him who is the 
head over all things, blessed forever. 

The sun is gone ; the shade is coming. Matamoras is a long 
sixteen miles off", at our slow walking pace, but the first jotting in a 
Mexican coach is ended. Not so the joltings ; fhey continue till 
day-break. The musings with the pencil end at dusk at a rancho 
by the roadside, the last and worst of all. Still the tortillas and 
the coffee, as being the last, were kindly entertained, the children 
duly patted and pennied, the parents praised ; and gladness un-- 
speakable filled the heart as the slow mules pulled slowly away. 
No more starting off" in a whirlwind rush ; that is reserved for city 
taverns, where glory and gain go together. It is night-fall ere they 
leave, and six leagues (sixteen miles) are to be dragged over. Mid- 
night they are due, and in expectancy thereof I foolishly mount on 
the top of the coach. The woods grow denser as the sky grows 
darker. The branches brush my head, but I am no fly, and not to 
be brushed into the empty coach below. I sit it out, seeing fantas- 
tic forms in every shadowy clump, riding up to vast walls that bar 
our way, straight,'smooth, and high? How is it possible to pene- 



414 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

trate them ? Yet as we approach them they vanish, or move back 
to a more defiant position. 

It is the mist of midnight, or of sleep, that plays such fantastic 
tricks with my eyes and with the scenery. Which ? Lights glim- 
mer in front ; surely these are the city lamps. They come near, 
and disappear in approaching, either as will-o'-the-wisps or as 
camp-fires. Again is darkness; again the damp mesquite strikes 
the dizzy head ; again the walls, high, and huge, and false, arise ; 
again the fires flicker and go out. The coachman cries " Kutchah ! 
Kutchah !" to his bedraggled mules, and tells me we are almost 
there. The hours drag on, and so does the coach. I think of the 
Light that shineth in a dark place, and wish for like illumination. 
But it comes not. No more does that come to the soul, wading 
through earth's midnight. How that soul is beset with false guides, 
bewildering lights, fictitious gates and walls, and still is out in the 
wet woods and fields, homeless and guideless. What a lesson that 
last night in Mexico taught me ! Never shall I forget it. Through 
all its hours I watched and waited on the top of that coach. It 
was almost day-break — four of the clock — ere the real gate was 
touched, the real city entered. The guardsman searches sharp, be- 
cause no fee is offered. The mules spurt and make their finish ; 
the drowsy clerk of the hotel is not too drowsy to forget how to 
cheat. A score of dollars is my due. He tries to pay me off with 
worn-out quarters smoothed to twenty cents and less. I protest. 
He proffers smooth dollars. I still protest. He declines any 
better currency. Nervous with long vigils, and anxious to get to 
Brownsville for breakfast and a couch, I entreat better treatment. 
He is incorrigible. I surrender, and snatch with a benison that 
burns, not blesses, I .hope, my degenerate dollars, and strike for 
the river. The stream is crossed by ferry in the glowing morning ; 
Mexico is done. 

Matamoras and Brownsville represent in name as in nature the 
two civilizations. The nomenclature of Mexico is soft, flowing, 
enervating ; that of America, short, sharp, energetic. Matamoras 
in pronunciation is like lotus-eating \ Brownsville like the crack 




llus*,!! AStr>itLere,H.y. 



Xonc-^^N^.f'-om'^Va^hiiiirton. 



THE ITINERARY — FROM VERA CRUZ TO MATAMORAS. 



TIVO CIVILIZATIONS. 417 

of a pistol. So are the civilizations they represent. Idle and in- 
curious, letting things go as they come, is the one ; obtrusive and 
ever-moulding is the other. The cities are like their nations. The 
old-style house, barred windows, barred gate -way, narrow street, 
dead wall, plastered and tinted, is Matamoras ; open windows, nar- 
row door-ways, no coach-doors, no city walls nor gates, wooden 
houses, painted sometimes, wide streets : Yankee of Yankees is 
Brownsville. The two, when blended and built up in Christ, will 
be a beauty and strength, husband and wife, one " entire and per- 
fect chrysolite." 



4l8 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



XIV. 

THE FINISH. 

Coach, not Couch. — A new Tread-mill. — Rascality of a Sub-treasurer.— The 
same Country, but another Driver. — Live-oak versus Mesquite. — A sandy 
Desert as large as Massachusetts. — Not a complete Desert. — A dirty, but hos- 
pitable Rancho. — Thousands of Cattle on no Hill. — A forty-mile Fence.— A 
Patch of four hundred square Miles. — Mr. King's Rancho and Pluck. — Perils. 
— Mr. Murdock's Murder.— Corpus Christi.—Indianola.— Good-bye. 

It was a coach, and not a couch, that awaited me. Neither beef- 
steak nor bed, on each of which I was so much doting, did I see or 
feel or taste in Brownsville. Reaching the hotel, I find a few serv- 
ants just opening and sweeping its hall ; for the time of breakfast 
is not yet. Inquiring as to the best means of reaching Galves- 
ton, I learn that no steamer is due for a day or two, and it will be 
several days before she leaves. A stage is to leave for Corpus 
Christi in a few moments. It will reach there to-morrow night. 
Thence I can catch a mail-boat for Indianola, perhaps a steamer, 
and so swing round to Galveston. 

It seems strange that one on a stage-coach for three weeks 
should crave it again so soon. But Holmes describes a tread-mill 
prisoner who was so pleased with his punishment that he deter- 
mined, at his release, to " have a round or two for fun," and, after 
he had got home, to set up "a tread-mill of his own." I have no 
expectation of going into the stage business myself; but I did feel 
so glad at escaping from that three weeks' imprisonment in a toss- 
ing, racking, galloping prison, that I felt willing to, add nearly two 
hundred miles more to it, and not hesitatingly mounted the coach 
of rest 

Two things helped forward this feeling — a dislike of the sea, and 



A KNAVISH AGENT. 419 

the fact that I was moving homeward ; so, like every other motive 

or act, it was mixed, 

"Joy and moan 
Melt into one." 

This is a new route, hardly yet opened. The first change no- 
ticeable was not in the country, but in the drivers and driving. 
The country remained the same. The Rio Grande is no more a 
natural boundary than the St. Lawrence. The same woods of mes- 
quite ; the same cactus (called here prickly-pear), with its varied 
and rich blossoming of crimson, yellow, and many-tinted hues ; the 
same humbler but not less beautiful flowers — these testified to a 
common country. The fields grew a little more open, but not vast- 
ly different from those the other side of the tiny stream which I 
had traveled beside for a day and a half, and only seen a corner of. 
once, and the narrow, muddy brook which I crossed at Matamoras. 
But the driving told me that I was in a new country. The four 
large horses, the calm driver, the unused whip, the unheard screech 
and yell, the square, steady trot, no spurts of a run and long blanks 
of walking, hardly even walking, the absence of mozos and stones, 
were all new features in horsemanship. The intelligent driver 
talked mildly, and showed also the calming influence of character 
and success. These elements grow with success, and America is 
fast becoming as phlegmatic as England or any other well-to-do 
people. 

I had been a little excited at Matamoras. The administrador, or 
agent, of the Diligence Company had put upon me, despite my pro- 
test, a lot of smooth and cheapened silver, what was left of my de- 
posit in Mexico. Fortunately, it was only ten dollars. It was a 
rascally robbery, and I urge all who cross the country to take up 
their deposit, what remains of it, at Comargo. It is a good way of 
traveling, as you can put your money in the office at Mexico, and 
draw it out at every place where you stop for the night, what you 
wish of it. But do not leave any of it for the man at Matamoras. 
Senor Don Rumaldo, I think they call him ; mal do, a giver of evil, 
he surely is. He attempted to shove forty quarters on me, not six 



420 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

of which could show both faces, and most could show none, and 
some never were worth more than pistareens, or twenty cents. 
When these were refused, he denied he had any more money, but 
afterward offered a chipped gold-piece. This could not be changed. 
He then offered ten dollars, only two of which were of full weight. 
This, of course, would have prevented the sale of the silver at its 
full value. He was robbing the depositors, and should be instant- 
ly removed. The other agents acted excellently. 

I had to run to catch the coach after this vexing debate, had 
been up all night, and had no chance even for a cup of coffee or a 
cup of milk ; so I was not in the best of conditions. But a glass 
of cold water, buttered rolls (butter had been a thing unknown for 
weeks), and a good nap put me to rights. 

The country became more open, and cattle began to becloud the 
broad prairies. The woods changed from the light, thin -leafed 
mesquite to the dark, thick, short, John-Bull leaf of the live-oak, an 
evergreen of beauty in this spring-time ; how much more in the 
yellowness of winter ! It stands in groups and bunches on the 
open sea of grass, at times stepping out by itself to show us how 
perfectly it can round itself into shape when it takes the notion. 
Then it is almost as lovely as a New England elm or a New York 
maple. I have not yet seen the Southern rival of these twain, nor 
the Western, unless this live-oak be he. It comes near it — so round, 
so compact, so green. It is handsome enough, anyway. 

Half-way of the trip we cross a sandy desert, forty miles wide ; 
and, with the passion for push that possesses the modern traveler, 
the slow dragging of the horses over it seems like a forty years' jour- 
ney in the wilderness. It takes all the night, and more. From 
five at evening to nine in the morning we pull through this heavy 
sand. But this soil is not barren after the Israelitish pattern. 
Rains keep it moist, and certain black specks in it keep it rich. 
Is black always the base of richness ? Greenness, therefore, does 
not desert it, nor cattle, nor live-oaks, nor flowers. Some of the 
finest groups of trees are on this space, which is as wide and 
long as the State of Massachusetts, and yet hardly noticed in this 



GREAT HERDS OF CATTLE. 421 

State, forty times her size. Many beautiful flowers cover it. I 
gatliered over a dozen different varieties round one rancho, and 
comforted and strengthened the wavering heart with that apostolic 
promise, " If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is 
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe 
you, O ye of little faith ?" These lovely grasses of purple, and scar- 
let, and blue, and pink, and lustrous white, and golden yellow, and 
variegated, how brief their life ! That beautiful soul far surpasses 
these creatures in original excellence, infinitely more surpasses it 
in that its day is eternal. 

It is hard sometimes to realize this, as you step into one of these 
dirty ranchos and see these unwashed, uncombed, almost undress- 
ed women and children, and imagine the change that Christ would 
make if fairly seated in their hearts. He will come, and the flow- 
er that fades be excelled, even at its beginning, by the flower that 
grows in beauty forever and forever. They are kind and hospita- 
ble now. How generously a mother and three girl-children, who 
seemed to have never known a comb or a towel, feasted me on 
thick milk and delicious coffee, and Spanish chats and smiles ! 
Won't they take to Sunday-schools and all their cleanly accompa- 
niments, when they get out of their Spanish and their Romanism 
into the light of English and Protestantism ? 

The fields show great herds of many cattle feeding. Words- 
worth thought, when he said, " There are forty feeding like one," 
that he was describing a good-sized herd. What would he have 
said had he seen these hundreds and thousands ? The prairies, 
rolling slightly, and dipping down into the sky on every side, are 
sprinkled with kine. There are thousands feeding like one. Well, 
it is only multiplication. He first said, if he did not first see, the 
fact of the silent feeding of great flocks and herds. The prairies 
would have amazed him more than the cattle. That forty, to his 
petty and pretty R)^dal meadows, were vastly more than these hun- 
dreds to these prairies, actually boundless to the eye. They are lost 
on the ocean. The cattle on a thousand hills are here transformed 
into thousands of cattle on level plains. 



422 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

Near noon we drive near a fence, the first I had seen, save of the 
corral sort for the coach horses. " That fence is forty miles long," 
says an employe of the road on the coach. Our Mexican driver 
(we have changed drivers) knows only to lash and scold his horses, 
run them and walk them by frequent turns. " Forty miles now ; 
that is its beginning. It will include twenty miles square when 
finished." The owner is Mr. King. We enter the gate, itself near- 
ly a mile from the house, which looks close by, and drive to the 
barn. Mr. King generously provides a cold cut of beef and cold 
cup of milk — rarities indeed. He has about sixty thousand cattle, 
and ten thousand horses and mules. He will get them all in his 
"patch" when the fence is completed, which will be, he says, sev- 
enty miles in length. He intends to improve his stock, and will 
slaughter twenty thousand this fall, to make way for the better 
quality. He keeps a hundred men racing down these herds, which 
are now wandering all the way from the Rio Grande to Austin. 
That is a specimen of the stock-breeding of the country. He is 
one of many such — only two or three quite as big, and only one 
bigger — Mr. Conner, who has not less than one hundred thousand 
cattle. A passenger had smiled an "Ah Sin " smile when I spoke 
of a hacienda in Mexico with its five thousand cattle and forty 
thousand sheep. I saw it now. 

They say Mr. King's life is threatened by the Mexicans ; but he 
is brave and daring. Once they shot at his ambulance, and killed 
a German on the box with the driver. His house is an open one, 
broad veranda, one story, wood — excellent for a fire, if the Mexic 
is so disposed. But he would sell his life dearly, and they do not 
want to buy at such rates ; so he will probably live a while yet. 

Not far this side, a small fenced inclosure, with trees and gar- 
dens, was the abode of Mr. Murdoch, who in the autumn of '72 
was caught in bed by these savages, chained down, covered with 
tar and kerosene, and the house set on fire. He was an easy prey 
to the flames. So these prairies are not Paradise, except as it was 
after the devil entered it. 

Corpus Christi receives us at night -fall. It is a live, pretty 



POINT OF DEPARTURE REACHED. 423 

town, lifted up slightly from a livelier and prettier bay. It is only 
a night we stop there. The mail-boat thence to Indianola drops 
down the bay at six in the morning. The wind is splendid, and 
the run also. The boat sits on the wave without a wave. The 
breeze is as soft and warm as it is strong ; so the more of it the 
better. I hoped it would get us to Rockport before the steamer 
left, but I was out of luck. The stars began to fight the other way. 
I had made every connection up to this time ; now I was to make 
none. The steamer left just before we arrived. She passed us, 
majestically scornful. Another left Indianola just before we came 
in sight. So we were left stranded at that port for a day, when the 
steamer transported us to Galveston, and so to New Orleans, our 
point of departure. The path to our door is reached. Let us 
shake hands, and Good-bye. 

28 



424 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



XV. 

CHRISTIAN WORK IN MEXICO. 

Not yet. — The First Last. — A Telegram and its Meaning. — Perils and Perplexi- 
ties of Church purchasing. — Temptation resisted. — Success and Dedication. 
— Cure Hidalgo and his Revolution. — Iturbide and Intolerance. — Beginning 
of the End. — The Mexican War, and its Religious Effects. — The Bible and the 
Preacher. — The first Revolt from Romanism. — Abolition of Property and of 
Institutions.— Invasion of the Papacy through France and Maximilian.— Ex- 
pulsion thereof through America and Juarez.— The Constitutionalists the 
first Preachers. — The first Martyr : " Viva Jesus ! Viva Mexico !" — Francisco 
Aguilar and the first Church. — The Bible and his Death. — First Appeal 
abroad. — Response. — Rev. Dr. Riley and his Work. — Excitement, Peril, Prog- , 
ress. — President Juarez, the first Protestant President. — The chief native 
Apostle, Manual Aguas. — His Excommunication by and of the Archbishop. — 
A powerful Attack on the Church. — His Death. — The Entrance of the Amer- 
ican Churches in their own Form. — Their present Status. — The first Ameri- 
can Martyr, Stephens; and how he was butchered. — San Andres. — Govern- 
mental Progress. — The Outlook. — Postfatory. 

Not quite yet Good-bye. A journey undertaken solely for 
Church purposes should not omit the consideration of that work 
from its pages. It has not been largely thrust into the body of 
the work, brief and infrequent references only having been made 
to the subject. The aim has been to give a transcript of the land 
and people, apart from all especial views or ends, so that those 
who sought light upon the country or sought the country itself 
should not have too much, to them, extraneous matter set before 
them. It seemed better to put such matter in a chapter by itself, 
so that those who wished it not might avoid the dish entirely, and 
those who wished for it might enjoy it all by itself At the risk 
of slight repetitions in minor points, let us glance at the story of 
Christian Work in Mexico, and put that which was first in its ap- 
propriate place, the last. 




CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO, CITY OF MEXICO. 



DIFFICULT NEGOTIATIONS. 427 

At the very close of the journey, in the little village of San An- 
tonio, where the grateful husband acknowledges the lordship of his 
lady in the painted confession along the ceiling of his casa, I re- 
ceived a telegram, which drew my eyes and soul far away from the 
handsome family, obedient husband, and horrible breakfast. It 
was an electric shock in which was more than magnetic currents ; 
for it foretold a future of unmeasured and immeasurable vastness, 
a future of spiritual currents of divine magnetism, that shall per- 
meate, thrill, revive, and renew this whole land. Its enigmatic 
words were these: "Puebla business closed. Mexico will be to- 
day." 

The brief line was inexpressibly grateful; for doubt had hung 
over the last purchase. Foes were many and sharp. One effort 
had failed through treachery, a priest appearing before the judge 
the day the papers were to be passed, and getting the property 
(the Church of Santa Inez, then used as a cotton warehouse) trans- 
ferred to minor heiresses, and another portion of the estate set off 
to the youth to whom this church had been already assigned, and 
who was going to sell it to us. What might happen between 
the beginning of the effort to purchase these more central quarters 
and its completion, even to the frustration of that completion, it 
was impossible to tell. Had any priest suspected the possibility 
of this attempt, every member of his guild, and, primarily, its pri- 
mate, the archbishop, would have put forth eveiy effort to have 
prevented success. 

And such efforts could have hardly failed of success ; for there 
were so many parties to negotiate with, that it seemed well-nigh 
impossible to preserve the secret. The real owner was in Paris. 
His administrador was a warm Papist. The holder of the first 
mortgage was a widow lady, residing in San Luis Potosi. The 
holder of the second mortgage was a carpenter in the city. Be- 
sides these proprietary interests, a person held it under a written 
lease for two years, for a theatre. Here were four, if not five, par- 
ties to be consulted ; for possibly the administrador might not have 
power to sell without a legal authorization from the actual owner. 



428 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

A more perilous adventure was never more successfully executed ; 
thanks, and thanks only, under God, to the sagacity and shrewd- 
ness and patient push of Dr. Julius A. Skilton, our consul-general, 
James Sullivan, Esq., and Senor Mendez, their attorney. To them 
the whole business was intrusted. A glance at the spacious quar- 
ters on the Monday after my arrival, which was the previous Satur- 
day night, was sufficient. I have never seen them since. I hardly 
dared glance at them as I passed the street, for fear some Jesuit 
looker-on might notice a too fond expression in the eyes, and re- 
port the danger to the high-priest. So great is this peril, that Bish- 
op Keener, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who was at 
the same time negotiating for suitable quarters, informed me that 
he had made his selection, but only by riding by the place in a car- 
riage, he not daring to inspect it more thoroughly. I regret to add 
that he failed in securing this spot, perhaps because the man he 
rode with or the man who drove him was in his secret, and put the 
priest on the track. The difficulties in my case were increased by 
the distance at which the first mortgagee lived, and the fact that 
it was a lady who held the claim as a portion of her husband's 
estates. She must be corresponded with in the slov/ process of 
the mail. A telegram would have quickened her fears and her 
covetousness. She must consult her compadre and all her family. 
The least conception that it was being bought for the Protestants 
would have probably cut off" all negotiations at the start, or would 
certainly have leaked out and cut them off" very soon thereafter. 

The lessee was left out of the transaction. His case would have 
to be managed after the purchase was completed. The other three 
parties were slowly and softly approached, and after nearly three 
months from the date of that ten minutes' visit, and the issuing 
thereupon of the order to secure, if possible, the property, I had 
the supreme satisfaction of receiving the above telegram at the 
hot and dusty and desolate San Antonio. Is it any wonder the 
spot blossomed into beauty ? The white dust turned to lilies. The 
hot sun tempered its blaze seemingly to the most genial warmth. 
Perhaps this event increased the comeliness of the family, and 



A BRIBE SPURNED. 4^1 

made Peg of San Antonio more beautiful than she really was. It 
was not powerful enough to transform the alnmerzo into a break- 
fast of delights. There were limits to even its ability. 

The end of the journey and its objective end are reached at one 
and the same time. The cause of our coming puts its doxology 
and benediction in at the end of our going. Against unseen and 
unnumbered foes, against Mexican procrastination, against possi- 
ble treachery, against perils without and fears whhin, success is 
assured. 

How great this peril was, a single fact illustrated. Mr. Sullivan 
was approached, the very day he had consummated the purchase, 
and when he yet held the titles in his own name, by the leading 
native broker of the city with an offer of five thousand dollars for 
his bargain. The offer was undoubtedly from a higher source, for 
the property had laid idle for years, and was of no possible use to 
the broker, there being acres of like convent ruins at his com- 
mand over all the city. It was instigated by the archbishop, un- 
doubtedly, who had watched the coming and going of these invad- 
ing ministers, and who had supposed as they left the city, with no 
possessions secured, their mission had failed, and who only woke 
up to the fact after their departure, when, the papers having all 
been passed, it was allowed to creep forth that this Irish gentle- 
man, the fear of every brigand, whom he had more than once made 
to know the accuracy of his shot, and whose protection at El Desi- 
erto showed like skill and pluck, the successful rebosa manufac- 
turer and silver operator, had bought this central and spacious prop- 
erty for a Protestant Church. 

But he mistook his man. The splendid bribe was spurned, and 
in due time the property was transferred to the real owners. It 
was soon fixed up as the residence for its missionary, school for 
girls, and the beautiful audience-room of the Trinity Church. The 
Christmas following saw the joyful consummation of this undertak- 
ing in the dedication of this church by the services of Rev. Drs. 
Butler, Carter, Cooper, Ramirez, Guerro, and Senors Hernando, 
Pascoe, and Morales. A large audience filled its handsome audi- 



432 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

torium. The dome o^ wood and glass lifted itself over the once 
open patio, erected by the first purchaser for his circus performers. 
Screens inclosed the area behind the pillars. The desk and plat- 
form and melodeon, with its simple style of sacred service, reminded 
■ the auditors that a new day had dawned in Mexico, or, at least, 
that a new hour of the day had struck. That day began to dawn 
and to shine before this glad hour arrived. Other men labored, 
and we were entering into their labors, not in any spirit of envy 
or strife, but with a desire for their enlargement, and with a pur- 
pose to unite with them in common love and labor for the recov- 
ery of this heritage to our common Lord and Master. 

The Church planted by Cortez on the ruins of the Aztec super- 
stition, with its horror of human sacrifices, existed unchallenged, so 
far as organized effort went, over three hundred years. From 1523, 
when Zaragossa, appointed to the headship of the Mexican Church, 
two years after the subjugation of the state, had exterminated the an- 
cient worship, unto 1823, there had not been an organized, hardly a 
visible protesting to the absolute sovereignty of that Church. Men 
had been burned at the stake, but more because they were Jews and 
Portuguese than as heretics, though heresy was the charge under 
which they were slain. The native had no disposition in his peon- 
age to assert his religious liberty, not even his civil. And but few 
Spaniards ever emerged into the heights of faith and of martyr- 
dom ; though undoubtedly some, brethren of those whom Torque- 
mada burned in Spain, avowed here like precious faith, and re- 
ceived like honored torture and burning. 

Out of sheer malice they slew those that dared profess a higher 
and better faith ; nay, they slew them on suspicion of such faith. 
The history of the Inquisition in Mexico remains to be written. 
We hope some missionary or native Christian will give to the world 
the story of this tribunal from year to year, its victims and its 
crimes. 

In 1811 the Cure Hidalgo raised the standard of independence 
from Spain ; but though of the priesthood, he had no countenance 
from the Church; and so, after terrible slaughter, his enterprise fail- 



AN UNEQUAL TREATY. 433 

ed. He is remembered now, and a superb statue of heroic size, 
"in form and gesture proudly eminent," stands in the walls of the 
Church of San Francisco, executed by two young brothers, await- 
ing its transfer into marble or bronze. It is most apt and fit that 
the moulded form of this earliest hero of emancipation and inde- 
pendence should be placed in the walls of a church which has 
also secured its independence from an oppressive and foreign 
faith. 

The cause of independence lay sleeping, but not dead, for a doz- 
en years, when the General, Iturbide, who had been chief in sup- 
pressing the revolt, headed it, and made it a speedy and almost 
bloodless triumph. But he succeeded because he recognized the 
supreme authority of the Church. His declaration of independ- 
ence began after the Jeffersonian sort : " Mexico is and of a right 
ought to be free from the throne of Spain." His second declara- 
tion how different : " The Roman Catholic Church is the religion 
of the state, and no other shall be tolerated." Had that been in 
our Declaration, our path upward had been equally slow and 
bloody. It, however, secured him the alliance of the Church, and 
was a wise political measure, viewed in the exigencies of the mo- 
ment j unwise, viewed in the light of the future. 

So rigidly was this state of intolerance maintained, that in a 
treaty made with our Government ten or twelve years after, while 
we granted perfect liberty of worship to their citizens resident in 
our territory, Mexico granted such liberty to ours only in their own 
private residences, and then " provided that such worship was not 
injurious to interests of state." And that treaty, I am told, on 
high official authority, remains unmodified to this day ; so that now, 
were Romanism in power, it could suppress even, private worship in 
an American family, and there could be no redress under our treaty 
stipulations. So rigid was the grasp of the Church over the whole 
state. 

The first ray that shot its solitary light across the dark was the 
bold act of Mr. Black in burying the poor shoe-maker, assassinated 
for not sufficiently respecting a kneeling Mexican's prejudices, in 



434 ^^^ NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

his prostration before the passing priest and wafer.* This occur- 
red in the year of Iturbide's successful revolution against Spain 
and more successful subjugation to Rome. But the real gray of 
the dawn was the American war, twenty-three years after the proc- 
lamation of dependence as well as of independence. Before that 
event not an open Bible could have been seen in the whole 
realm, which then included California, Nevada, Colorado, up to, 
if not across, the line of the Pacific Railway ; nor could a min- 
ister conduct worship other than after the form of the Roman 
Church. 

That war carried the Bible and the Protestant Church into Mex- 
ico. The soldiers brought the Book in their knapsacks or pock- 
ets, and falling out by the way, through cowardice, capture, or sick- 
ness, they dropped this seed of the Gospel along these new paths. 
They could easily talk with the natives after a few weeks, and in 
their hours of sickness, sometimes unto death, they translated its 
tender words into the common tongue. Thus the thirsty peon 
tasted the first drop of the Water of Life. Then, too, the Bible 
Society sent its agents with the armies, who carried and scattered 
the Word wherever the troops marched. I have met with sev- 
eral since my return who engaged in this work under the shelter 
of our flag. 

Besides the sowing of the seed in this form, was the more notice- 
able though not more valuable revelation of it in the shape of pub- 
lic worship. To that hour, no Mexican in his own land had seen 
any Christian worship, except the celebration of the mass and its 
attendant ceremonies. The gaudy array of the priests, the mum- 
blings in an unknown tongue, the prostration before a carved im- 
age, the uplifting of the Bread and Body of God, the swinging of 
incense, and ringing of bells, and beating of breasts, and wailings 
of people, and mournful and triumphal music of the organ and 
choir — this was their only daily food. The extras were after the 
same sort : preaching that fostered the follies of superstition and 

* See page 257. 



THE CAUSE OF CONQUEST. 43 e 

fed the fires of persecution, and processions that made the materi- 
alized service more material. 

It was a new sight, the standing of a gentleman in the garb of a 
gentleman, among soldiers and civilians, the reading of a hymn in 
their own language which all join in singing, the utterance of a 
prayer in the same language, in which all reverently bow and join, 
the reading of the Bible in their own tongue, and the deliverance 
of a discourse upon its passages ; only this, and nothing more. 
They had never seen it after this fashion. A gentleman said to 
me, "The first time I ever saw Protestant service conducted was 
in the palace of the President, by the chaplain of General Scott." 

The effect of this was heightened from its being performed by 
these foreign invaders and conquerors under their own flag. The 
inquiry shot from mind to mind and heart to heart of the on-gaz- 
ing multitudes, what is the new mode of religion t The Spanish 
conqueror's form of worship was no greater novelty to the Aztec, 
than the American conqueror's was to the Mexican. And each 
was associated with the victory of the worshiper. " Had this relig- 
ion," they were compelled to ask, " any thing to do with the sudden 
and complete overthrow of our armies,? Is this anti-Roman faith 
so much greater than the Roman, that a dozen thousand men can 
carry the fortified and well-defended gorges of Cerro Gordo, march 
over the volcano passes, storm Chapul tepee, and capture the city 
in less than half the time it took Cortez to subdue the land, and 
that against a people of our own European nationality, trained in 
every art and weapon of war with which we are conversant .?" 

What can 'the answer be, but that the cause of the conquest is 
Religion ? And as the Montezuma and his men recognized sadly 
that their faith caused their overthrow, so the rulers of Mexico ac- 
knowledged that like slavery was the reason of their subjugation. 
So will France yet confess that it is her religion that made her 
sink before the German arms, and that only the highest faith can 
produce the highest race. 

The revelation of this conviction appeared in a very few years 
after the American conquest. Our withdrawal from the land de- 



436 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



layed the revelation ; but it came. The first proclamation of inde- 
pendence from Rome was made by Comonfort in 1856, less than 
ten years after our coming and going. The Bible had been allow- 
ed to stay, and was steadily, though slowly and almost impercepti- 
bly, leavening the lump. The street that went out from the west- 
ern end of the plaza, parallel with the Street of San Francisco, was 
intercepted by the Convent of San Francisco. Comonfort saw that 
if he was to improve the city anywhere, it must be begun here. 
This splendid suite of buildings must be pierced. The archbishop 
resisted. " Touch that, and all is touched." He was right. He 
touched that, and all was touched. That fell, and all fell. The 
convent was cut in twain, and the street opened from the plaza to 
the gates. That was Mexico's first proclamation against Rome. 
On one side that street to-day you will see parks and dormitories 
of the convent ; on the other, the patio, chapel, and church, with 
several blocks of private dwellings, two chapels, used for a stable 
and a blacksmith shop, and the former library, now used as the 
chapel for American service, and blocks of residences. 

That was the key-note of the revolution. On it went, sweeping 
out the friars and nuns, and cutting their superb estates in pieces. 
It was Protestantism in the State, blindly destroying, but not build- 
ing up.* 

Juarez followed Comonfort, and the war prevailed yet more. 
Confiscations of convent property became general. Schools were 
established without the control of the Church. The institutions 
of friarhood and sisterhood were abolished, and the claims of the 
Church, formerly loaned on the estates of the people, were declared 
of none effect. As this claim covered almost all property, it was a 
proclamation of universal financial emancipation. The disruption 
of Church and State was violently going forward. Had no relig- 
ious influence come in to build up a better Church and State, that 
conflict would have resulted in the resubjugation of the State to 

* See Madame Calderon De La Barca, for animating descriptions of these in- 
stitutions at the height of their prosperity, hardly forty years ago. Her travels 
are still the best description of the people and their pastimes. 







f!i 



MEXICO'S DELIVERANCE. 43^ 

the Church, as has always been the case in France and Spain, and, 
but for the very active Protestantizing of Italy, would be the Case 
there also. The Church saw this, and took advantage of our civil 
war to revive her fallen fortunes. Maximilian and Carlotta, two 
bigoted Papists, were imported and upheld by the arms of Napo- 
leon and Eugenie, the last the most bigoted of Papists, in order to 
bring the State again at the feet of the Church. Not Napoleon, 
but Pius IX., is the instigator of that war. He who alone of tem- 
poral sovereigns recognized our slave power as a nation, sought 
to help that rebellion to succeed by getting up this rebellion in a 
neighboring state, and fostered that for the sake of making this 
triumphant. He succeeded. The French army subdued the re- 
publican, and from Vera Cruz to Paso del Norte freedom in relig- 
ion and in government went down. Rome was mistress of Mexico. 

Not until our war was ended did the Papal dominion cease. 
Juarez enters, Maximilian is captured, and justly and wisely shot, 
and Mexico is delivered from Rome, as she had been nearly half 
a century before from Spain. Her progress from that hour has 
been steady and rapid. But this progress has been because of the 
increase of the leavening power of the Bible and the Church. This 
has a story of its own. 

Papers lie before me, prepared by a Mexican Protestant at the 
request of Rev. Dr. Riley, which give the story of the rise of the 
true Church. From this unprinted pamphlet I am permitted to 
make up this narrative. 

It declares that Mexico was groaning under the hard yoke of 
the Roman clergy ; that after a war of many years, and after long 
and cruel sufferings, the republican government was established, 
and freedom of religion. " How much blood was shed," it plaint- 
ively cries, "in settling these laws! How many families are still 
weeping for their fathers, how many mothers for their children, 
slain in the wars of the Reformation !" 

After the first election of Don Benito Juarez to the Presidency, 
and before the last civil war, that is between 1858 and 1863, some 
clergymen, called Constitutionalists, established a new worship like 

29 



440 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

that which is to-day performed by the anti-Romanists. To these 
ministers the President gave the use of two of the confiscated 
churches, Mercy and the Most Holy Trinity. 

When the Frencli came in, the monarchical government, at the 
instigation of the priests, seized one of these ministers, and having 
scraped his hands, and his clerical tonsure on the top of his head, 
in order to degrade him of his priestly character, they led him out to 
execution. When about to be shot, seeing the rifles leveled at his 
breast, he cried out, just as they fired, " Viva Jesus ! Viva Mexico !" 
(Long live Jesus ! Long live Mexico !) 

This vivid expression of devotion to the Lord Christ and his 
country is the inspiration of the whole movement. The scatter- 
ing of the Bible resulted in the conversion of Rev. Francis Agui- 
lar. After the expulsion of the French in 1867, he opened a hall 
for public worship in San Jose de Real, in the old convent of the 
Profesa. He was the first preacher of the true faith. His meet- 
ings were well attended. He also translated a book entitled " Man 
and the Bible," which had a large circulation. In a few months 
he became sick unto death, and in the last hour, taking his Bible, 
pressing it tenderly to his bosom, he said, " I find in this peace and 
happiness," and fell asleep in Jesus. The second dying witness 
was as serene and triumphant as the first. "Jesus," "the Bible," 
were their several words of victory. Francisco Aguilar circulated 
the Scriptures with great zeal, and helped greatly to extend and 
establish the true faith. 

On his death, his church, being without a pastor, sent a commit- 
tee to the United States to seek aid from the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. This Church, through its bishop in New Orleans, gave 
them pecuniary help, but could not aid them farther. Rev. H. C. 
Riley, a native of Chili, born of English parents, but conversant with 
the language from his birth, was preaching at that time to a Span- 
ish congregation in the city of New York. He listened to the cry, 
gave up his congregation, and in the spring of 187 1 started for the 
country. The American and Foreign Christian Union supplied 
means for the furtherance of the cause, and his own purse, and his 



PROGRESS OF THE WORK. 441 

father's, with the gifts of William E. Dodge and others, gave him 
the necessary sinews for the war upon which he was entering. 

That war quickly broke out. Almost as soon as he had arrived 
and taken quarters at the Hotel Iturbide, there was a conspiracy 
formed for his murder in that very hotel. He saw the band meet- 
ing to plot against his life. He escaped to safer and less notice- 
able quarters. He fought fire with fire, bringing out pamphlet af- 
ter pamphlet, the first of which was called "The True Liberty." 
He wrote and arranged many of the hymns and tunes that are 
still in use. He also prepared a book of worship, with Scripture 
readings and prayers, after the form of the Episcopalians. 

The excitement grew, and the priests thundered against the new 
worship which had so speedily assumed form under the experience 
and energy of the new apostle. An American Spaniard, versed in 
their whole style of procedure, versed equally in the opposite and 
better style, with singing and Bible reading, and praying and 
preaching, and publishing, was hiaking himself felt and feared 
throughout the city and surroundings. 

This uproar drew attention of politicians and priests to the new 
man and his work. His friends at home seconded his zeal. Pri- 
vate persons gave largely for the purchase of two church edifices, 
that of San Francisco, and that of San Jose de Gracia. The latter 
was chiefly, if not solely, the gift of his own father. Rev. Dr. Butler, 
secretary of the Society, traversed our country, eloquently pleading 
for the new enterprise, and aiding its extension by liberal and espe,- 
cial gifts of many gentlemen. The Chapel of San Francisco and 
the Church of San Jose de Gracia were fitted up and occupied by 
large congregations. The latter is a comely church within, though 
possessed of but few external attractions. Among the worshipers 
at the latter place were President Juarez and his family. 

Meantime the pamphlet and pulpit war went on. But Dr. Riley 
was not left alone on the field. Out of the eater came forth meat. 
The most popular preacher in the cathedral and the Church of 
San Francisco, over whose eloquence thousands had hung en- 
tranced, who was a violent persecutor of the rising faith, a Dorain- 



442 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



ican friar, Manuel Aguas, read the pamphlets, was convinced, with- 
drew from his pulpit and from the mass. He read the Bible, 

distrusted his former teach- 
■ ;i^ "• y o^^J_;^;o:: ings, visited the "Church of 

Jesus," as the new church 
called itself, and at last con- 
fessed unto salvation. 

It made a great stir. He 
became very bold in his 
preaching, and aggravated his 
former associates by his abili- 
ty and enthusiasm and popu- 
larity. The archbishop ex- 
communicated him in the ca- 
thedral in the presence of an 
immense crowd. But the de- 
posed priest did not fear the 
anathemas. He stood in the 
audience, and even sought de- 
CHURCH OF SAN JOSE DE GRAciA. ^^tg ^hi]g t^g terrible curscs 

were being solemnly recited — anathemas that a few years before 
would have been instantly attended with burnings on the plaza 
of his own convent, and in which also, a few years before, had it 
been another of his brethren who was being thus accursed, he 
would himself have taken part joyfully in the burning. He 
waxed bolder, and wrote to the archbishop a powerful paper, in 
reply to his excommunication, showing up the follies and false- 
hoods of the Romish Church. 

It is worthy of being scattered over our own land. It professes 
to give a conversation between Paul and the archbishop. The for- 
mer visits the cathedral, witnesses the performances, condemns the 
heathen idolatries, and learns, to his surprise, that he is finding fault 
with what some assert to be the most ancient Christian ordinances. 
He inquires farther, and finds no Bible permitted to be read, mar- 
riage of the clergy forbidden, idolatry observed in the worship of 




A POWERFUL REBUKE. 443 

the mass, the bread of sacrament alone being distributed to the 
people, the wine being denied because, as Aguas says, one council 
affirms, " the blood of the Lord would be squandered by adhering 
to the mustache." In these charges he utters some truths not so 
well known to Americans as they should be, and in a masterly, 
sarcastic manner. He declares "Prohibition of matrimony has 
driven many unfortunate proselytes to commit great immoralities;" 
that fastings are not very painful, the rich on such days fasting 
over tables laden with delicacies and wines for four hours, "rising 
very contented, not to say inebriated ;" that the God whom the 
priest creates in the mass "has been deposited in the abdomen of 
mice, when these mischievous little creatures have eaten the con- 
secrated host, a misfortune which has often happened, though kept 
secret from the faithful." He charges the priests with stealing the 
alms deposited to pray souls out of purgatory, and mocks at their 
saints for every thing, declaring that "it is a very fortunate arrange- 
ment to ask Saint Apollonia to cure us of the toothache ; Saint 
Luc}'', of cataracts on the eyes ; Saint Vincent Ferrer, of pains of 
childbirth; Saint Anthony the Capizon, 'so called on account of 
the large head the sculptor has seen fit to place on his shoulders,' 
to find lost things ; Saint Caralampius, to keep our houses from 
being burned; Saint Dinias, to preserve us from robbers; Saint Ju- 
deus Thaddeus, to deliver from slanderous and lying tongues," al- 
though he sarcastically adds, "the nuns have multiplied the prayers 
to this saint in vain, since Padre Aguas will not leave Mexico, 
nor cease invading the Holy Cathedral." He notes what was men- 
tioned as being absent from the catechism sold at Leon, the erasing 
of the Second Commandment. He also sarcastically refers to the 
priest's family as "nephews who are the legitimate sons of their 
uncles," and presses home on the archbishop not only these un- 
welcome facts, but the severest denunciation of the apostle for per- 
mitting and approving them. Pitifully he concludes with the story 
of her cruelty, and describes her great inquisitor, Dominic de Guz- 
man, as surpassing all others in cruelty, and yet canonized and wor- 
shiped by the Church. Nowhere in modern history has there been 



444 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



a severer, sharper, more sarcastic, and more effectual rebuke to the 
pretensions and career of Papacy than in this powerful pamphlet. 
Can not our tract societies give it to our people ? 




MANUEL AGUAS. 



The separation was complete. The most popular of her preach- 
ers, confessor to the canons of the cathedral, doctor and teacher 
of divinity, giving medical advice to multitudes of the poor of the 
city, was so cast out by the greater excommunication, which was 
nailed on the doors of the churches and announced in the papers, 
that all his friends forsook him, and, had it not been for the police, 
the boys would have stoned him in the streets. 

He preached to large houses in the two chapels, and superin- 
tended the work after Dr. Riley's departure. Sickness seized him, 
some think poison, and he died in the spring of 1872, when only 
about fifty years of age. His last sermon was on the text, " Blessed 



THE WORK SPREADING. 445 

are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say 
all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice,, and 
be exceeding glad, for great shall be your reward in heaven." 
•He was so ill he could scarcely finish his sermon. He was taken 
from the pulpit. Soon he was dying. A friend asked him, in this 
solemn moment, " Do you now love Jesus ?" " Much, very much," 
was the answer. 

As memory commenced to fail, so that he was forgetting his 
nearest friends, one of them stooped over the dying man, and in 
his ear asked the question, "Do you remember the blood of Christ ?" 
He had not forgotten that. He exclaimed, "The most precious 
blood of Jesus !" On breathing his last, a smile rested on his coun- 
tenance, which abode still upon it when it lay in state in the Chap- 
el of St. Francis. A great multitude attended his funeral, among 
whom were many Romanists. His hearse had properly upon it 
the emblem of an open Bible. By that he had conquered. 

There is no doubt that Manuel Aguas is, so far, the chief fruit 
of the Mexican Reformation. Whether he would have proved the 
Luther, can not be known. Probably its Luther must come from 
abroad, or from the youth now growing up in the faith.* More 
probably it will have, as it will need, no Luther. 

The congregations were not confined to the two chapels of the 
" Church of Jesus," or to any organization. Laymen and clerics 
began to talk where opportunity offered. I attended one such 
meeting, held by R. Ponce de Leon, near the Tulu gate. It was 
a charming morning when we walked through dust and degrada- 
tion to the preaching place. It was in a quadrangle occupied by 
a gentleman who acted as an interpreter to the Indians.f He was 
a grave man of sixty. He led me into his library, and showed me 
books in different languages still in use. The Indians had come 
to the gate to do their trading. A few, in their blankets and 
wretchedness, sat on the clean floor of the little room, while the 
interpreter and a few of his sort occupied chairs. Senor Ponce 

* See Appendix B. t See Appendix C. 



446 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

9 

read prayers and Scriptures ; his wife and daughter sang superbly, 
and he talked earnestly. It was an impressive and profitable hour. 

Witfi the death of Manuel Aguas the movement assumed a new 
departure. The American and Foreign Christian Union aban- 
doned the field. The Presbyterians, encouraged by Dr. Porteus, of 
Philadelphia, for many years a resident of Zacatecas, accepted the 
mission in Villa de Cos, in the State of Zacatecas, and sent their 
missionaries there in the fall of 1872. They have now flourishing 
missions at Toluca, Zacatecas, Vera Cruz, and in and around the 
city of Mexico. Rev. Mr. Hutchinson at the capital is very efficient 
and successful. 

The Baptists flourish in Monterey under the supervision of the 
Rev. Mr. Westrup. A native preacher introduced their form of 
faith. The Congregationalists at Monterey and Guadalajara have 
already had precedence of all other missionary churches in the 
seal of martyrdom to which they have attained, in the brutal mas- 
sacre of Rev. Mr. Stephens, by a mob incited by a Romish priest. 

This martyr, John Luther Stephens, deserves especial mention. 
Born at Swansea, Wales, October 19, 1847, murdered in Ahualulco, 
March 2, 1874, he had barely passed his quarter of a century ere 
he captured this crown. His father, a sea-captain, was drowned at 
sea in 1850. His mother went to live in Petaluma, California." 
In 1866, when nineteen years of age, he joined the Congregational 
Church in that place. He spent nearly five years in study for the 
ministry, graduating in May, 1872. That fall he entered Mexico 
from the West. He staid at Guadalajara, doing valiant service 
with his colleague, Mr. Watkins, printing the Biblical and Roman 
Ten Commandments, and placarding them over the city, distrib- 
uting Bibles, and holding meetings. Great was their boldness of 
speech toward their malignant enemies of the Roman Church. 
Several times they were threatened with assassination ; but their 
would-be murderers were baffled. Mr. Stephens visited Ahualulco 
in the fall of '73, sixty miles from Guadalajara. Here he had 
great prosperity, though also great peril. One attempt was made 
to shoot him, but the man was prevented. At last they succeeded. 



MURDER INCITED. 



447 



This is the story as told by Mr. Watkins, his colleague, and printed 
in the Missionary Herald : 

" For three months he labored with success far beyond our r.iost sanguine ex- 
pectations, winning many souls to the truth as it is in Jesus. He had gained, 
through his labor of love, the favor of the majority of the people of Ahualulco. 
This grand success infuriated the cura, and the day before Mr. Stephens's death 
he preached a most exciting sermon to the numerous Indians who had gathered 
there, from the various ranchos and pueblos near by, in which he said, ^It is nec- 
essary to cut down, even to the roots, the tree that bears badfriiit. You may inter- 
pret these words as you please.'' And on March 2, at one o'clock in the morning, 
a mob of over two hundred men, armed with muskets, axes, clubs, and swords, 
approached the house where Mr. Stephens lived, crying, 'Long live the religion !' 
' Long live the Senor Cura !' ' Death to the Protestants !' 

" The house which dear Stephens occupied was fronting the public plaza, and 
on the opposite side of the plaza were a few soldiers, acting as guard to the pris- 
on and to the town, from whom he expected protection. But we have learned 
that these soldiers, instead of giving him protection, aided the enemy to carry out 
their evil design of murder and robbery. As soon as Mr. Stephens and the two 
brethren that were with him saw that the mob was fast breaking down the front 
door they entered an open square, which was in the centre of the house. From 
this square, Mr. Stephens and Andres, one of the brethren, made their way into 
the back yard, seeking there a place of shelter. Here they separated, Mr. Ste- 
phens taking a pair of stairs that led to a hay-loft, and Andres making his escape 
by climbing over the wall of the back yard and letting himself down among the 
ruins of an old house, from which he made his way, unseen by the mob, to the 
mountains. 

" Mr. Stephens had been in the hay-loft but a few moments when the furi- 
ous throng entered, and he, seeing in the crowd the soldiers alluded to, ran to 
meet them, thinking they had come to his help ; and when he cried out, ' Pro- 
tect me ! Protect me !' they replied, ' They come ! They come !' and at the 
same time soldiers and others discharged their muskets and other fire-arms 
on our beloved brother, killing him instantly. One shot entered his eye, and 
several his breast, and as soon as the villains reached him they used their 
swords, cutting his head literally to pieces, and it is said, taking the brains ozit 
Ziiith sticks. 

" Nor was it enough for these ferocious assassins to take his life away so in- 
humanly, and commit such barbarities on the dead body, but they afterward rob- 
bed his body of every article he had on, and the house of every thing he had in 
it. They took all his books and burned them in the public plaza. The small 
English Bible that was in the dear martyr's hand when he died shared the same 



448 



OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



fate. And, lest the awful crime should fail to prove the utmost barbarity, they 
entered the church, and announced the deed well done by ringing twice a merry 
peal of b^lls. 




JOHN L. STEPHENS. 

"We are left to weep and mom-n the loss of one so dearly beloved, but his 
tears have been all wiped away. Stephens, the protomartyr from among us, 
doubtless ere this has been welcomed by Stephen, the protomartyr from among 
the disciples of old, into the company of those who have laid down their lives 
for Christ's sake, and our brother now, with them, wears his crown in glory, the 
crown that belongeth to the martyr, a ' crown that fadeth not away.' 

" It was an absolute impossibility to bring the body to Guadalajara, on ac- 
count of the great heat and the insecurity of the roads, so it was secretly buried 
Monday night, by five of the brethren, in a place only known to them." 



THE MARTYRED STEPHENS. 449 

A letter from Mrs. Watkins narrates this incident : 

" The theme upon which he dwelt for some time before his death was ' Sanc- 
tification,' as though in unconscious preparation for that life before him upon 
which he was so shortly to enter. During the last evening of his life he sang 
several times, in company with others who were present, in Spanish, ' I am trav- 
eling, yes, to heaven I am going.' Sooner by far than he expected did he enter 
the heavenly port, where he is enjoying the bliss prepared for him." 

This is the favorite hymn, referred to previously, " Voy al cielo, 
soy peregrine " (page 93), and shows how wide-spread is that famil- 
iar melod)'-, and how befitting it proved itself to be in this supreme 
moment. 

The Church that slew him hailed his death with the same glad- 
ness that it did the like and larger massacre of Saint Bartholomew. 
A priest in the theological seminary of Guadalajara told his stu- 
dents that when Stephens was- killed "the Church had one ene- 
my, and the world one thief, the less ;" and "would to God that the 
other one" (Watkins) " were destroyed." The local government ar- 
rested two priests and nine of the people, but all were liberated. 
It is as impossible to hang one yet, or to punish him in any shape, 
for murdering a Protestant. Mexico prevents, sometimes, these 
murders, but is powerless to punish those who may commit them. 
But their commission will yet be followed by punishment, and Mex- 
ico be redeemed from this horrible sin and crime. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church South has initiated work in 
the capital, having secured the Chapel of San Andres, and is pre- 
paring missionaries for other sections. The Chapel of San Andres 
is in the rear of where the Church of St. Andrew stood, which 
church received the body of Maximilian, on its way to Europe, and 
where it lay in state. Juarez, consequently, leveled the splendid 
structure with the ground, and opened a street over the very spot 
where Maximilian lay. 

The Episcopal Church, though not formally present, is the chief 
patron of the work of Rev. Dr. Riley, which is called the Church of 
Jesus, and in an indirect, if not direct, form will probably continue 
to support that organization. The Methodist Episcopal Church 



450 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

has flourishing missions at Orizaba, Cordova, Pachuca, Miraflores, 
and other places, and in the city itself, where it has four missions 
as well as its central quarters. So that from the seed-germ of Con- 
sul Black, fifty years ago, watered and replenished by the American 
war, and nurtured by the martyrs who suffered unto death not ten 
years ago, there has sprung already a goodly harvest, while prom- 
ises of yet greater harvests beckon the Church to yet greater sacri- 
fices. It is reported that sixty-nine churches are already organ- 
ized and flourishing throughout that land. It is probable that this 
number is less than the facts will warrant. 

The state, meanwhile, is progressing in the ideas of a proper dis- 
tribution of the powers and prerogative of itself and its co-ordi- 
nate, the Church. Getting clear of the terrible tyranny that so 
long held it down, and striking blind blows at all ecclesiasticism, in 
its efforts to free itself, it is settling down calmly and strongly to a 
proper discrimination of its own functions. It has protected the 
new Church in many places from danger, and will not do less, but 
more, in that direction in the future, if need shall be. 

Meantime, the enemy rages and rises at times into ferocity of 
hatred. At Toluca it assailed with riotous bands the little congre- 
gation, shouting " Death to the Protestants !"* At Tirajaen a gang 
set on fire the house of a family, while all were sleeping, and 
wounded the father severely with the sword. At Cuernervaca a 
Romanist stabbed one of the brethren with a poniard, and killed 
him. At Capulhuac they killed one and wounded three. At the 
capital, earlier in the movement, one was assassinated. At Aca- 
pulco a mob killed and wounded a dozen. It was suppressed by 
volleys discharged into its midst by the commandant of the place, 
which resulted in several deaths. Other persecutions have oc- 
curred, and may occur ; for the country has hardly yet been pen- 
etrated, and the pagan, which is the village population, may rise 
fiercely on the teachers and preachers of a better faith. But rise 
and grow that faith will. The labors of Riley; the martyrdoms 

* See Appendix D. 



RAILROADS.— PYRAMIDS. 453 

of Aguilar and Stephens, the heroism of Aguas, the vigor of the 
present workers, shall not be in vain. To-morrow shall be as this 
day, and much more abundant. 

Another topic, touched upon in the beginning, deserves notice at 
the end. I had the privilege of going out in the same steamer 
with railroad managers, abode in the same hotel with them, and 
rode with them over the same paths. Success has attended efforts 
in that direction. Mr. Plumb, former secretary of legation, and a 
son, I believe, of a missionary, has succeeded in getting an agree- 
ment signed by the Government which insures a railroad to Leon 
and to Texas. He was not the representative of the party I was 
naost conversant with ; but it is with railroads as with Christian 
churches : it is not of so much importance who build them as that 
they be established. His bland manners, admirable tact, elegant 
bijou of a house, fine command of the language, and knowledge of 
men, with a constant perseverance that was not to be put by, se- 
cured him the precedence. Undoubtedly, the parties behind both 
leaders will be united in the prosecution of the gigantic enterprise. 
Railroads and religion have an affinity. They come from the same 
land, and for the elevation of the people. Together they will de- 
velop and regenerate the nation. 

A correction may find place here. Reading, since these pages 
were written, the interesting work of Judge Wilson, I find a sugges- 
tion there, which I am inclined to adopt. It is that the Pyramid 
of Gholula is natural, and not artificial. He explains the adobe 
stratifications thai, were noted, as buttresses to preserve the road. 
There is some plausibility in this ; but only a thorough research 
can verify it. Nor does this prove the other pyramids near the city 
to be natural. His views as to Cortez and his conquest I do not 
support. It is, therefore, with pleasure that I admit this suggestion. 

I have carefully abstained from giving any information that I 
had to learn from books. All such information is better found in 
its own place. I have not told you the number of the states, their 
names, their boundaries, their populations, their trade, or any thing 
belonging to that valuable department of Mexican knowledge. I 



454 OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. 

could have easily written out from books the facts that Mexico has 
9,176,082 inhabitants, not one more, nor less; that it is as densely 
populated as the " United States of the North j" that it is made up 
of twenty-three states, one territory, and one district, whose names 
I could write in, but you would not know any more then than now. 
All this and more you will find in cyclopaedias and gazetteers, and 
chiefly in a coming guide-book which has never yet been gotten 
up, but which I learned that an enterprising gentleman was en- 
gaged in. I have not discussed the various tribes and tongues of 
the Indians. That has been done, and is being done, by expert 
and accomplished hands. 

I should also add, that I know of no previous itinerary of the 
tour from Mexico to Matamoras, a French brief military journal 
to Saltillo. being all I have seen. This part of the journey, there- 
fore, is entirely without any aid from other sources than my own 
eyes. The rest has been once and again spread before us on other 
canvas. Yet a new picture of an old, familiar landscape may con- 
vey new and agreeable impressions. May this have that fortune. 

The work is done. It remains but to thank the many friends 
who have aided in putting it into this comely shape. Mr. Kilburn, 
of the firm of Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, New Hampshire, whom 
I met in the capital, has kindly allowed the use of many of his su- 
perb photographs. Messrs. Skilton, Butler, Riley, and others have 
aided with their superior knowledge. The secretaries of the sever- 
al missionary boards operating here have kindly supplied me with 
the data at their command. How patiently the compositors and 
proof-readers, and that chief, unknown of men, who superintends 
them, have gone through the obscure manuscript, and brought it 
forth in comeliness, only they and the writer know. They, at least, 
shall be gratefully remembered. To all, thanks. Not the least to 
you, brother reader, for having accompanied me thus far on this 
long journey. May you break the icy monotony of our long win- 
ters by a visit to our Next-door Neighbor, and forget this story in 
the delights of your own experience. Hail and farewell ! 



APPENDIX A. 



THE PROTEST IN LEON. 

[Translated from the Revista Universal, Mexico, October 28, 1873.] 

''''Doctor and Master Don yose Maria de yesus Diez y Sollarto, Bishop of Leon 
by the Grace of God, to our beloved Diocesans, Health and Peace in our Lord 
yesus Christ: 

"Following the illustrious example of our Most Holy Father, Pius IX., who, 
full of sacerdotal firmness, in the midst of the most cruel enmities against the 
Church, incessantly raises his pontifical voice to admonish the faithful on each 
occasion as to the duties that are incumbent on them, and explicitly declares ail 
the Catholic doctrines which it is their duty to follow, intimating what censures 
the Church would pass on any act contrary to said doctrines, according to the 
canons that were lately published in his allocution of the 25th of the past July ; 
we, in the fulfillment of our episcopal duty, do not wish to criminate ourselves be- 
fore God (before whose tribunal we have all to appear) by not raising our voice 
on the present occasion, when our faithful ones, seduced by the dread of human- 
ity, protect a constitution and laws which involve many underhand heresies con- 
demned by the Holy Church, and others nominally condemned in the Encyclic 
Quanta y Syllabjis of the same most high pontiff, Pius IX. 

" We declare : That the protest which newly exists, and which is added to- 
day, the 25th of September, to the Constitution of 1857 by decree of the General 
Congress is unlawful, and those who protect it simply commit a mortal sin, and 
the crime of heresy, and those who comply with the feast of its externals will re- 
quire absolution from the Holy Father. 

" We equally declare : That for the same reason the Mexican Episcopate de- 
clared that he could not absolve those who had taken the oath of allegiance to 
' the Laws of Reform, without previous retractation from the scandal and from 
the heretical propositions which are involved in this protest, and that n'o one 
who has protected it can be absolved sacramentally without previous retracta- 
tion and reparation from the scandal, and from the form and manner of swearing 
to said laws. 

"The Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, following the footsteps of the 

30 



456 



APPENDIX B. 



holy apostles, Peter and Paul, and the expressed doctrines which are evident 
in their canonical epistles, has been the first to teach obedience to the people, 
respect and submission to the authorities and civil laws, not only through fear, 
but for conscience' sake, 7ton sohun propter iram, sed itiam propter concientiam, 
and still more through the disjunctive of obeying God and obeying man, and has 
incessantly proclaimed the maxim of the prince of the apostles, Peter, ' obediro 
oportet Deo magis quatn hominihis ' (it is necessary to obey God rather than 
man), and in such an extreme the answer of a Catholic ought to be that of the 
same apostle when before the Sanhedrim, 'JVonpossupius' (we can not, it is not 
lawful) ; and a man can not do these things without showing that he acts con- 
trary to the authorities who respect the authority of God, according to the 
judgment of St. Paul : 'Noji est potestas nisi a Deo'' (There is no power but of 
God). 

" We exhort, therefore, our faithful diocesans, and admonish them, and even 
supplicate them, ' in vinculis Cristi,'' to enliven their faith, and remember the 
precept of our Lord Jesus Christ, which to-day urges us in a special manner to 
confess before men, in order that they may prove us in the name of their Heav- 
enly Father, and that we might flee resolutely from the risk of incurring that ter- 
rible sentence which the same Jesus Christ adds, ' He that denieth me before 
men, him will I also deny before my Father and his angels.' 

"And, in order that this notice might reach all, we command all the rectors 
of our diocesans that the first religious act after the reception of this be, in order 
that all may read, to fix it on the doors of the chancels. 

" Given in the Santa Visita de Silao, on the 14th of October, signed by my 
hand, and countersigned by our Secretary of Visita. 

" Jos^ Maria de Jesus, Bishop of Leon. 

" Jose H. Ibarguengoitia, Secretary of Visita. 



APPENDIX B. 

The following letter of Manuel Aguas, written only six months before his 
death, illustrates his spirit and the soundness of his conversion. It is a touch- 
ing cry from the chief of the fathers of this better faith. It should yet be heard. 

"Mexico, October, 1871. 

" I have learned that you take a sincere and practical interest in the propaga- 
tion of the Gospel in this Republic of Mexico — a nation until now sadly unfortu- 
nate — unfortunate because it has not enjoyed the blessings of true religion. 

"The Lord has, most clearly and signally, blessed the Christian efforts that 
you have made in our behalf Let me tell you how : You contributed funds in 



APPENDIX B. 4,57 

behalf of Gospel work in this, my native land. Part of these funds were em- 
ployed in the publication of Christian pamphlets, which were widely distributed 
here. These publications were the instrumentality that the Lord selected, in or- 
der that I might begin to realize the spiritual blindness in which I found myself. 
. I was a presbyter in the Roman Church, and most anxiously longed for salva- 
tion. "With all sincerity did I follow the errors of that idolatrous sect, and im- 
agined Protestantism, or true Christianity, to be, as it were, a pestilence that was 
coming to make us, in Mexico, more unfortunate than ever. I consequently op- 
posed its doctrines with all my power. I sincerely thought that in so doing I 
not only did good service to my native land, but also gained merits to aid me in 
obtaining everlasting glory. How unfortunate was I ! I knew that Jesus Christ 
had died for us ; but that most precious belief was to me obscured, because from 
childhood I had been taught that, in order to obtain salvation, besides the mer- 
its of the Redeemer, the meritorious works of men were also needed. As if, for- 
sooth, the sacrifice of Calvary was not enough to save the soul that truly trusts 
in it. Being imbued with these Romish errors, it is not strange that I should 
oppose and attack true Christianity ; that I should frequently declaim against it 
in the pulpit ; that I should go to the confessional in search of a remedy for my 
spiritual evils ; and, as one precipice often leads to another, I prayed to the Vir- 
gin Mary and to the saints, and endeavored to gain all the indulgences possible ; 
all which practices offend and tend to dishonor Jesus, our generous Saviour. 

"As a natural consequence, I had not obtained peace for my soul ; I doubted 
of my salvation, and I never believed that I had done sufficient work to obtain 
it ; and I was truly unfortunate, because I observed with sorrow that, after all I 
did, my heart remained unconverted, and dragged me often into sin, 

" I was in this sad state when there reached me the pamphlet called ' True 
Liberty.' I read it most carefully ; and, notwithstanding that I tried to find in 
the arsenal of my Romish subtleties arguments with which to answer the clear 
reasoning that I found in this publication, a voice within — the voice of my con- 
science — told me that my answers were not satisfactory, and that perhaps I was 
in error. 

" I commenced to reject the errors of Romanism, and dedicated myself to the 
study of all the Protestant books and pamphlets that I could lay my hands on. 
I carefully read the ' History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century,' by 
Merle D'Aubigne, and, above all, I commenced to study the Bible, without pay- 
ing any attention to the Romish notes and interpretations. This study, from the 
moment that it was accompanied by earnest prayer, led me to true happiness. 
I commenced to see the light. The Lord had pity on me, and enabled me to 
clearly understand the great truths of the Gospel. 

" I first realized that it is false, most false, that salvation is only found in the 
Romish Church, as the Romanists pretend. But what completely convinced me 



458 



APPENDIX B. 



of the falseness of the Roman system was the finding that, after I distrusted my 
ovm natural strength and trusted in Jesus alone, abandoning all other interces- 
sors, and believing that true safety, salvation, and the remedy for our guilt, are 
alone to be found in the sacrifice of Calvary, I felt a great change in my heart ; 
my feelings were different ; what formerly pleased me now was repugnant to 
me ; I felt real and positive sentiments of love and charity toward my brethren 
— sentiments which before were fictitious and artificial in me ; in a word, I found 
the long-desired peace of my soul. By the grace of the Lord, I was enabled to 
resist temptations, and passed a quiet, peaceful, and happy life. As I had dedi- 
cated several years to the study of medicine, I was able to maintain myself by 
this profession. In the evening I read the Holy Scriptures to my family, and 
prayed with them. 

"Although all this, was very agreeable to me, it was not just that I should con- 
tinue inactive in the Gospel cause. I soon commenced to think that I was in 
conscience bound to participate with my brethren the happiness I enjoyed, and ' 
especially so, as I had much facility in speaking to multitudes, from my long 
practice and experience in preaching that I had had while yet a Roman Catho- 
lic. I determined to manifest publicly that I had separated myself from the 
Roman Church, and that I had joined the true Church of Jesus. But, in order to 
take this step, I found myself laboring under great difficulties, which the devil 
would fain have me believe to be insurmountable. The idea of poverty from 
want of a livelihood presented itself to me with all its deformity ; as I was aware 
that the moment I made such a declaration the Roman Bishop would excom- 
municate me, and, as I lived among an essentially fanatic people, I felt sure that 
not only my patients would abandon me immediately, but that all my friends 
would turn a cold shoulder upon me and also abandon me, and that my life 
would be menaced and attacks made against it. These and other considerations 
entered my mind, and I imagine that Satan augmented them, so as to try and 
swerve me from accomplishing the holy resolution that I had adopted. 

" Nevertheless, my resolution was unshaken, and I commenced to attend the 
Provisional Protestant Church, which had been established in a large hall situ- 
ated in the Street of San Juan de Letran. Being short-sighted, I there began to 
know my dear brother, the Rev. Henry Chauncey Riley, solely by his voice. It 
filled me with comfort to hear him speak of Jesus and his precious blood; the 
liturgy and hymns which the congregation used enchanted me, as they were full 
of the pure faith of the primitive Christian; and I anxiously desired the arrival 
of Sundays, because in our church services I enjoyed delicious moments of peace 
and joy — Christian emotions that I had never felt in the Roman sect. 

" I had for some time been thinking how to become personally acquainted 
with my brother Henry. One night, as I was at one of our churches, I heard 
my brother preach with so much valor and faith that I became quite ashamed 



APPENDIX B. 



459 



of myself, and was filled with a holy envy of that Chilian who, in Mexico, in the 
midst of the most loathsome idolatry, and surrounded by enemies, presented him- 
self as an intrepid soldier of Jesus, ready to lay down his life for his divine Cap- 
tain. I then was determined to present myself to him alone, and to give him a 
fraternal greeting, exclaiming, ' We are brothers ; our cause is the same : let us 
unite our efforts, and, strengthened by our adorable Saviour, let us contend for 
the faith of Jesus, even though we perish in the contest' 

" Various persons had spoken to my brother Riley about me. I was presented 
to him by an elderly gentleman, who is a Protestant. We had a long inter- 
view, in which we were convinced that we were brothers in the faith ; we loved 
one another ; and, since then, we worked together unitedly. Our Lord God has 
deigned to bless our work : for notwithstanding the intense and furious persecu- 
tion that the Romanists have raised against me, the number of true Christians 
is increasing most marvelously in Mexico. In Central Mexico we have many 
Christian congregations, and their numbers are increasing rapidly, even among 
the smaller towns, where our brethren often suffer the most terrible persecutions 
from the Roman Catholic curates and fanatics. The Romanists have burned 
the houses of some of our fellow-Christians, wounding men, women, and chil- 
dren in their efforts to check the progress of the Gospel in Mexico ; but, in spite 
of all their efforts, we have the consolation of knowing that the sacred light of 
the Gospel, which is now so brighi;ly shining in my native land, and increasing in 
splendor every day, will not be darkened, even with all the efforts that our per- 
secutors, the fanatical Roman Catholics, are making against it. 

"Allow me to heartily thank you for what you have done in our behalf Part 
of your contribution for Mexico was converted into Christian pamphlets, that 
were widely and effectively circulated here. One of these arrived at my sad 
dwelling, where I was despairingly suffering, because I had not been able to find 
peace for my soul, finding myself, as I then did, in the darkness of Roman idola- 
try ; but from the time that I read that Christian pamphlet — little esteemed by 
the worldly, but most precious to me as containing the Divine truth — the I^rd 
commenced to lead me, little by little, in a manner at once sweet and powerful, 
without in the least wounding my free-will, until He guided me into the glorious 
light of faith, where I find myself so happy, and where, by the Lord's help, with 
the Bible in my hand, I have succeeded in making the Roman magnates in this 
capital tremble with dread and consternation. 

" By what I have already said, you will clearly understand that these are sol- 
emn moments for my native land, as these may have much to do with her future 
happiness. The admirable religious movement that is now making such rapid 
progress in this republic, is likely soon to spread the Gospel in its purity far and 
wide throughout this nation, and lead to a great reformation in the Mexican 
Church. This reformation is absolutely needed. Our society is divided between 



460 APPENDIX B. 

'Liberals' and 'Conservative Romanists.' The 'Liberals' have abandoned the 
Roman Church. The Romanists, who have imagined from what is taught them 
that they can live a life of dissipation, and yet, provided they confess themselves 
in their dying hour, be saved, remain in the heretical sect of Rome. 

" The ' Liberals ' have plunged into the dark horrors of infidelity, and are the 
slaves of their evil inclinations ; the Romanists are the slaves of the tyrant of 
Rome. In a word, true religion has not been the foundation of our society. The 
results of this want have been fratricidal wars, insecurity, avarice, poverty, and 
misery. Scenes of wickedness have been the schools where our Mexican chil- 
dren have been educated. 

" Such a heart-rending picture ought to fill Christians with sorrow. They 
ought to ask themselves: 'Why should Mexico find itself on the border of a 
precipice where deepest ruin threatens V 

" The answer is a very simple one. Allow me to point it out with frankness, 
but without meaning to give the slightest offense, for I love you for Jesus Christ's 
sake. Having made this observation, I must say that all you who compose the 
true Church of Christ in that country neighboring to ours are partly to blame 
for our misfortunes. I know that you are true Christians ; I know that you have 
imparted to Spain your generous protection ; I know that you send your mis- 
sionaries to remote parts of the world, such as Syria, whei^e you generously and 
disinterestedly aid the Gospel work. Why, then, have you for so many years 
forgotten your brethren, who, by your very side, have been without the bread of 
the Divine word ? Why do you allow them to perish, and to sink, day by day, 
into deeper ignorance and fanaticism ? It is well and good that you should ex- 
ercise your charity with those people to whom you send the light of the Gospel, 
however distant they may be ; but this is no reason why you should leave the 
Mexicans by your very side in the darkness of idolatry. I am sure that you and 
your friends will agree with me that it is necessary to do what is possible, in or- 
der that true religion may be extended throughout this, my native land. If you 
think on this subject with earnest prayer to God, your consciences will call upon 
you to fulfill this duty as Christians. God has not in vain bestowed on your 
wealthy Church riches, nor in vain has He endowed you with generous hearts. 

"Manuel Aguas.'! 



APPENDIX C 

THE INDIAN TRIBES OF MEXICO.— THEIR ACTUAL CONDI- 
TION, SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL. 

Mr. James Pascoe, an English Wesleyan, for many years residing in Toluca, 
now doing admirable service in the Presbyterian Church, gives in this article in 
the monthly Missionary Journal of that Church an excellent view of the past 
and present of the Indian. 

" The Indians form three-fourths of the entire population of Mexico, and are 
divided into three distinct classes : 1st, the subjugated tribes ; 2d, the Pinto In- 
dians of the Tierras Calientes ; 3d, the untamed Comanches, Apaches, and others. 
At present, I will speak only of the subjugated tribes, as being most numerous, 
most important, and as those who are likely to be first brought under Gospel in- 
fluence. These Indians are the broken-down and despised remnants of the old 
Aztec, Texcucan, Tlascaltecan, and other nations, who, only three hundred years 
ago, were the ruling powers in Mexico. Three centuries of the withering influ- 
ence of Romanism have sufficed to degrade these noble tribes to the level of 
beasts of burden ; stamping out almost every spark of liberty or virtue, and steep- 
ing them in superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism of the grossest kind. These 
tribes still retain their ancient dialects, although, in many cases, corrupted and 
mixed with many Spanish words ; but still they are so distinct that an Indian of 
one tribe can not understand the dialect of another ; and the gulf that separates 
the Spanish-speaking Mexican from the Mexican or Otomi, or Mazahua-speak- 
ing Indian, is as great as that which divides the English and Chinese. 

"As a rule, the Indians have their towns 'apart from the Mexicans, and the 
lands belong to the whole community, each man having a right to cut fire-wood 
or boards, etc., and to sell them, or to till any part he pleases; but no one can 
sell land without the consent of the whole town. Also, each man is obliged to 
render general services, gratuitously when required, and the expenses of religious 
festivals are defrayed from a general fund, to which all contribute. The Mexi- 
can Government has endeavored to break down this system of clanship ; but the 
Indians, generally, have been shrewd enough to evade the laws and remain in 
their old ways. 

" These towns are not grouped in any order. Here will be a town of Indians, 
speaking Mazahua ; close by may be another of Spanish-speaking Mexicans ; a 



462 APPENDIX C. 

little farther on a village of Otomies — this medley being seen in the neighbor- 
hood of all large cities, and each town preserves its distinctive language and cus- 
toms, and even style and color of dress — the women of one town adopting one 
uniform shape and color of garments. Eut, at a greater distance from the cities, 
we find large districts occupied wholly by Indians of one tribe or another. The 
Indian lives generally in a rude hut of shingles, or of sun-dried mud bricks, and 
roofed with shingles or grass according to the supply at hand ; but such huts 
are low-roofed, the bare earth the only carpet, and wind and rain finding free en- 
try by a thousand openings in walls and roofs. The one. room serves for every 
purpose, and often affords shelter to pigs and poultry, as well as to the family. 
The staple food is the maize cake (tortilla), the Indian very rarely tasting animal 
food — many not once a month, and thousands not once a year. Their costume 
is also simple. The men wear a simple shirt and a pair of cotton drawers ; the 
women, a thin chemise, and a colored ' enagra ' (skirt) rolled around their waist ; 
and the children, as a rule, in unhampered freedom. A ' petate ' (rush mat) for 
a bed when obtainable, and a ' zerape ' (blanket) as overcoat by day and bed- 
clothes by night, complete the Indian's outfit. These Indians supply the towns 
with poultry, vegetables, pottery, eggs, mats, and other similar corn materials, 
which they carry for many leagues. 

" For instance, an Indian starts from his home loaded with goods weighing, 
on an average, five arrobas (one hundred and twenty-five pounds), and sometimes 
eight arrobas, and will travel a week, and often two or three weeks, before dis- 
posing of his wares. He calculates how many days the journey will last, and 
takes a stock of tortillas to last the whole time, allowing six tortillas a day, which 
he divides into three portions of two tortillas each, for morning, noon, and even- 
ing meal. And this is his only subsistence. So ignorant and stubborn are these 
Indians that they oftentimes refuse to sell their goods on the road. I have seen 
many carrying fowls, for instance, to sell in Mexico city ; I have met them a 
week's journey from Mexico, and have proposed to buy the entire lot at the 
same price they hoped to realize at their journey's end; but no, he was bound 
for the city, and all my arguments were vain : not a chick would he sell. This 
has occurred on various occasions. Charcoal, plants, etc., are all supplied to the 
towns by the Indians, and it is astonishing to see their patient endurance. A 
man will spend, at least, four days in the mountains burning the charcoal ; then 
carries it on his back a day's journey, sometimes more, and sells it for thirty- 
seven cents, thus realizing from six to seven cents a day. In the same way the 
poor creature fares with all else. If he sells planks or 'vigas,' he has first to 
pay for liberty to fell timber, if he happens not to belong to a town rich in for- 
ests. Felling the tree and hewing out the log with his hatchet occupies a day. 
In four days he has four ' vigas ' ready. The whole family is then assembled, 
and the logs are dragged down to the plain and placed on two rude wheels — 



APPENDIX C. 463 

also the work of the hatchet. The donkey is now hitched on, and husband, wife, 
sons, and daughters, each lending a hand, away they travel, one or two days' 
journey to the nearest city. On reaching it, they must pay an entrance-fee, gen- 
erally only three cents on each log ; and at length they sell their logs at thirty- 
seven cents each, and oftentimes for less. 

" The Mexican can not do without the Indian. Farms would be deserted, 
lands untilled, cattle unattended, and 'the markets entirely deserted, were it not 
for the poor, patient, despised Indian. Worse still, the poor Indian is the sta- 
ple food of the cannon, and without him the Mexican would be unable to sustain 
his revolutions. 

" It may be asked, how is it that the Indians, being in such a great numerical 
majority, allow themselves to be down-trodden by the few Mexicans who rule 
them ? It is because Romanism has so effectually blighted and crushed out their 
old chivalry and love of liberty, and has steeped them in a degrading and pro- 
found ignorance. Excepting the few who, within the past few years, have become 
acquainted with God's word by means of Protestantism, we shall be safe in say- 
ing that not a single soul among them has ever read a line of the Bible. 

" Very few of the men can read or write. National schools are found in some 
of the villages, but only for boys. Schools for girls are almost unknown. Per- 
haps a few are found in the cities ; but in the smaller towns and villages they 
are unheard of. Thus the Indian women are kept in profound ignorance ; a vast 
majority of the men are the same. This mighty engine of darkness, wielded by 
the skill and cunning of Romish priests, has produced the fearful uncleanliness 
of body and soul, the stupid superstition, and bloody fanaticism which now char- 
acterize the Indian of Mexico. 

" Underlying this patient humility and subjection to their Mexican lords, the 
Indian nourishes a deep-seated and ever-augmenting hatred of his whiter coun- 
trymen. The Indian and the Mexican races do not mingle, except in isolated 
and exceptional cases. The Indian, in his necessary intercourse with the Mex- 
ican, naturally acquires a knowledge of the Spanish language ; but they jealously 
avoid speaking that tongue unless compelled by necessity. In their homes not 
a word of Spanish is heard ; the women scrupulously avoid learning it, and of 
course the children grow up without understanding a word. I have gone through 
whole villages and not found a single woman or child who could speak Spanish. 
I have also observed, on large haciendas, where hundreds of Indians are employ- 
ed, and where they daily hear Spanish spoken, many of the women, who come 
weekly to the pay-office to take up their husband's miserable salaries, although 
understanding Spanish, nothing will induce them to speak it ; and some bailiff 
or head workman, an Indian also, always acts as interpreter. His aversion to 
speaking Spanish is also seen in religious matters. The Indian refuses to con- 
fess to the priest except in his own native tongue. Very few priests understand 



464 



APPENDIX C. 



those tongues ; and to surmount the difficulty the priest has a list of written 
questions and answers, which he learns to pronounce like a parrot. When the 
Indian presents himself, the priest reads question No. i. If the Indian replies 
in accordance with the written answer, well and good ; but if not, the priest reads 
again, until, by good luck, the right word is uttered, and the hitch overcome. 
The priest who explained this ingenious mode of confessing was somewhat per- 
plexed when I remarked : ' But suppose the Indian confesses to some sin not 
down on the list ; what then ?' The Indian is always treated as an inferior crea- 
ture. The priest requires his Mexican parishioners to confess and receive the 
sacrament very frequently ; but the Indian is not expected to confess oftener 
than once a year, and, as a rule, he receives the communion only at marriage and 
when about to die. Once in a lifetime is considered enough for him. The 
march of Liberalism has done much to alter this state of affairs ; but not many 
years ago the Indian might confess, but could not commune without a special li- 
cense.' So great is the chasm which separates the Mexican from the Indian, 
that the title of ^gente de razon,^ or people of reason, is given to the former. 
Nothing is more common than the expression, 'Is he an Indian.'" 'No, he is 
" de razon ;" ' thus making the Mexican to be a reasonable being, in contradis- 
tinction to the poor despised Indian, who ranks only with beasts of burden. 
The Mexican Indian is essentially religious ; his whole life seems devoted to the 
service of the priests and saints ; his earnings are all devoted to wax-candles 
and rockets to be burned on feast-days, and he seems to think of nothing but 
processions and pilgrimages to some distant shrine. Since the days of his Az- 
tecan forefathers, the only change which the Indian has undergone in religion is 
that of adoring a San Antonio instead of his ancient god, ' Huitzilopochtle ;' and, 
with this slight change in the objects of his worship, he continues to adore on the 
same sacred spots, and with many of the ceremonies, and with all the ignorance 
and superstitious zeal as did his pagan forefathers. 

" The Roman Catholic priests, in days gone by, in order to divert the Indians 
from their Aztec idolatries, adopted the ingenious plan of going by night to some 
heathen temple, removing the old idol, and placing in its stead a crucifix or some 
Catholic saint. The next day the Indians were amazed to find a new god in- 
stead of the old one, and at once accepted the change ; they continued their wor- 
ship as before. Cannibalism and human sacrifices have died out ; but, if we 
view the Indian's present religion from his own stand-point, we shall see that 
really he finds not one single point of difference. In his old Aztec religion he 
had a water baptism, confession to priests, numerous gods to adore, and whose 
aid he invoked under various circumstances. He worshiped images of wood 
or stone ; employed flowers and fruits as offerings, and incense also, and offered 
fellow-beings in sacrifice, while he also worshiped a goddess whom he styled 
' Our Mother ;' and in his worship dances and pantomimes took a prominent 



APPENDIX C. 465 

rank. In his new Roman Catholic religion he finds baptism and confession; a 
great host of saints to adore — saints for every circumstance or ill of life ; he finds 
images better made, and of richer material than the old ones; he again employs 
fruits, and flowers, and incense ; worships another goddess as ' Mother of God,' 
and ' Queen of Heaven,' and 'Our Lady.' He is also taught to believe that not 
a mere fellow-being is sacrificed, but his Creator Himself — as the Romanists de- 
clare, in real and actual sacrifice, thousands of times every day ; and, as of old, 
the Indian still dances and performs pantomimes in his religious festivals. 
Where, then, is the difi'erence ? 

"As a proof of some of my assertions, I will mention a few facts. In the large 
town of 'Yinacautepec,' distant about two leagues from Toluca, I visited the 
annual feast on various occasions. It draws an immense number of spectators 
from all parts, and for several days bull -fights, and cock-fights, and religious pro- 
cessions hold sway. The procession is a very gorgeous affair, and issues from 
the church. Banners, and wax-candles, and images in great number ; music by 
the band, and rockets whizzing ; but the greatest feature of all consists of a num- 
ber of Indians dressed in grotesque attires, with skins of animals, bulls' horns, 
cows' tails, and some with their heads helmeted with the entire skin of game- 
cocks — altogether forming a wildly fantastic mob, shouting and dancing around 
their priests and saints like so many imps from the lower regions. The famous 
church of ' La Villa de Guadalupe,' near the city of Mexico, is built on the site 
of an old Aztec temple, and the Roman Catholic priests adopted their usual plan 
of removing the old and replacing it with the new one, and by means of a pre- 
tended apparition have made ' Our Lady of Guadalupe ' become the patron saint 
of Mexico. 

" The far-famed convent of ' El Senor de Chalma,' about fourteen leagues to 
the south of Toluca, is another instance. It is the favorite shrine of all the In- 
dian tribes of the land. Formerly, before the convent was built, the place was 
occupied by an Aztec idol, located in a cave. This idol existed long after Ro- 
man Catholic churches had been built in neighboring towns ; and the Indians, 
when they wished to have a child baptized, would first carry the infant to be 
blessed by their Aztec god, and from there would go to the Romish church and 
complete the ceremony. To make the most of this propensity, the Catholics, 
in their usual fashion, stole the idol from the cave and placed there 'the present 
' Lord of Chalma,' which is a crucifix, the Saviour being painted copper-color. 
This apparition gave rise to a convent being built ; and all the year round the 
Indians, whole families, and whole towns, make pilgrimages from all parts of the 
land to the said convent. The sales of candles and the Popish requisites are 
enormous. A shop is attached to the convent, where the poor Indians buy their 
candles, which they carry to the priests, who remit them by a back-door to the 
shop again, where they are sold and sold again many times over. But here, also, 



466 APPENDIX D. 

the chief feature of the Indian worship consists in dances inside the church, 
which is of great size. Eye-witnesses assure me that at one time can be seen as 
many as sixteen distinct groups of dancers, each group with its separate band of 
music, all playing different tunes at the same time, and the worshipers tripping it 
merrily in different dances, producing a Babel confusion and a grotesque panto- 
mime, which baffles description. 

" These are of daily occurrence, and are a true and faithful specimen of the 
spiritual condition of the Mexican Indians of to-day." 



APPENDIX D. 

The following placard and commentary show something of the perils our 
cause has to undergo. Their dates are late, and they, or others like them, we 
fear, are not yet concluded. 

[Translated from El Monitor Re^ublicano, September 27, 1873.] 




■■'DEATH TO THE PROTESTANTS ! ! 

"To THE People of Toluca, — Either you are Catholic by name, or Catho- 
lics in fact. If you are Catholics in faith, give a terrible blow to these savages, 
intruders, and adventurers, who, to make themselves appear wise and important, 
and to assure to themselves a future without labor, attempt that which they do 
not understand — that band of filthy scoundrels, deluded sons of all the devils. 
Let us rise e7t masse to finish at once this accursed race, whose proper place is in 
hell, which is not complete without them. With one sure blow insure their death 
and the death of their families. Let a fiery death exterminate this sect of ac- 
cursed wretches, who attempt to overthrow the Apostolic Roman Catholic relig- 
ion, in which we will live and die. 

" Unfurl proudly the standard of the Faith, and shout, ' Long live the religion ! 
Viva la religion ! ! Death to the sons of Satan ! ! !' " 



APPENDIX D. 467 

[Translated from the Revista Universal, Mexico, October 29, 1873.] 

''ACTIONS OF GOOD CATHOLICS. 

"ASSAULT ON THE HOUSE OF A PROTESTANT. 

''HE AND HIS AGED PARENTS ARE WOUNDED BY THE PSEUDO- 
CA THOLICS. 

"LAUDABLE CONDUCT OF THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF 
MEXICO. 

"A few days ago we published a placard, which was circulated in Toluca, di- 
rected against the P-rotestants of that city, and exciting the ' good Catholics ' to 
try to kill all the said Protestants in those parts. 

" So it seems that the excitement is extending. We have tidings from Toluca 
in which we are informed that a Mr. Valero, an invalid, was attacked in his own 
house in Metepec by a party of ' good Catholics,' who, armed with swords and 
muskets, entered the dwelling of said Protestant, wounding him, and then left 
him nearly dead. 

" Of course those barbarians did not make their incursion without insulting 
and using filthy words toward the Christians, and the unfortunate Valero's moth- 
er, whom they also wounded. 

" The aged father was also seriously wounded by the ' bandidos religiosos,' 
and it is greatly feared that his son will die shortly. 

"The Governor of the State has put forth energetic measures for the appre- 
hension of these invaders, and those upon whom the responsibility rests of exe- 
cuting justice with them will fulfill their duty ; these infractors will see that such 
perpetrations will not escape the power of justice." , 



THE END. 



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HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OP DATES, relating to all Ages and Nations. For Uni- 
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of American Readers. Svo, Cloth, $5 00 ; Sheep, $0 00. 

MACGREGOR'S ROB ROY ON THE JORDAN. The Rob Boy on the Jordan, 
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and the Waters of Damascus. By J. Maogkegok, M.A. With Maps and Illus- 
trations. Crown Svo, Cloth, $2 50. ' 

WALLACE'S MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. The MaLiy Archipelago: the Laud of the 
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Studies of Man and Nature. By Alfked Rursel Wallace. With Ten Maps 
and Fifty-one Elegant Illustrations. Crown Svo, Cloth, $2 50. 

WHYMPER'S ALASKA. Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska, for- 
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parts of the North Pacific. By Fkeueuick Wutmpee. With Map and Illustr;v. 
tions. Crown Svo, Cloth, $2 50. 

ORTON'S ANDES AND THE AMAZON. The Andes and the Amazon ; or, Across 
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History in Vass-ar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and Corresponding Member of 
the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. With a New Map of Equatorial 
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WINCHELL'S SKETCHES OP CREATION. Sketches of Creation : a Popular 
View of some of the Grand Conclusions of the Sciences in reference to the His- 
tory of Matter and of Life. Together with a Statement of the lutimations of 
Science respecting the Primordial Condition and the Ultimate Destiny of the 
Earth and the Solar System. By At.exander Winchelt,, LL.D., Professor of 
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State Geological" Survey. With Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

WHITE'S MASSACRE OP ST. BARTHOLOMEW. The Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew : Preceded by a History of the Reliirious Wars in the Reign of Charles IX. 
By Henky WuiTE, M.A. With Illustrations. Svo, Cloth, .?! T5. 



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